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Assessing Online Learning: What One University Learned about Student Success, Persistence, and Satisfaction
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With more than 73 percent of adults in the United States using the Internet (Pew Internet and American Life Project 2006), universities are turning to Web-based instruction to better serve the needs of their students. As an endeavor by educators to maximize learning opportunities for the Net generation-students with lifestyles that involve frequent use of personal, mobile, and digital technologies (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005)-online lesson delivery also responds to higher education's role in the emerging world economy (Friedman 2005). Current statistics show that more than 2.3 million students took an online course in fall 2004 and that this educational mode is growing more than 18 percent a year (Alien and Seaman 2005). These data underscore the important role that online resources play in the lives of undergraduate students, 78 percent of whom indicate they used the Internet for homework prior to entering college and 80 percent of whom have a computer by their freshman year (Educause Center for Applied Research 2003).
As a result of these developments, the past decade has seen online teaching and learning evolve from an experimental intervention to a legitimate component of contemporary higher education. In the present postsecondary environment, it is difficult to find a college or university that does not offer some form of distance or distributed learning. Today's college students have grown up expecting everything to be available online and, indeed, universities have responded to these expectations by offering a variety of online options for them. Many are developing fully online programs designed to meet both student demand and strategic institutional goals. The question is no longer whether online education is as good as face-to-face instruction, but rather how to prepare and support faculty in the online environment and ensure that students achieve important learning outcomes whether they study in online or face-to-face...