[The Montana Professor 23.2, Spring 2013 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]

Online Education: Business as Usual or the Next, Best Thing?

Michael H. Scarlett
Assistant Professor of Educational Theory and Practice
MSU-Billings

Sharon F. Hobbs
Professor of Educational Foundations
MSU-Billings

Cindy Ann Dell
Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction
MSU-Billings

Electronic technology has played a vital role in enhancing teaching and learning in higher education for more than 50 years. Many of us still remember the time-consuming tedium of doing academic writing using typewriters. Providing syllabi or information handouts for students required someone, usually an office staff person, to type the information so it could be reproduced via a duplicating machine. Any changes made in the information required starting the process over. Cumbersome overhead projectors were used to project information for student note taking. Both students and faculty members pored over articles preserved on microfilm or microfiche in libraries. In classrooms across the country today, sophisticated "smart" technology allows an instructor and students to project documents, show presentations, videos, and websites, and engage in interactive discussions across time and space. Research can be done from a home or office computer whenever it is convenient rather than when the library is open. Information can be shared with students through a variety of effective and efficient means. In short, electronic technology has streamlined the educational process for both faculty and students.

As welcome as technological advances in higher education have been, new technology has not fundamentally changed the way we think about teaching and learning. In a sense, technological advances have simply allowed us to do what we have always done better and more efficiently. The point here is not that university faculty have stagnated or that higher education has made no progress over the past 50 years but rather that the basic assumptions about what it means to teach and learn have been tweaked, not reconceptualized. Online education has the power to turn us around so that we look at our assumptions about what we want higher education to accomplish from a new vantage point.

The focus of this paper is on the disruptive presence that online education has introduced to business as usual in higher education. This notion of disruption comes from work done by Clayton Christensen in the mid-1990s (Bower & Christensen, 1995). Speaking primarily about business innovations, Christensen makes a distinction between "sustaining technologies" that are successful primarily because they work efficiently and align with customer expectations, needs, and desires and "disruptive innovations" that sometimes appear quite unexpectedly; initially they don't work nearly as well as mainstream products or services and may not connect to customer expectations. However, these disruptive innovations have the potential to remodel expectations from the ground up and attract a new set of customers who see utility in the new products or services. Christensen offers a number of familiar examples of disruptive innovations: mainframe computers replaced by personal computers and more recently, by tablets and smart phones; digital cameras and software have replaced bulky and expensive cameras that use film, with its cumbersome processes for developing, printing, and editing; mobile cell phones have largely replaced landline telephones. In each of these examples, the companies successfully implementing sustaining technology find their market usurped "by the little guy with the sling shot—a sling shot that just happens to be cruder, easier to use, less expensive, and more attractive to a heretofore unengaged set of new consumers than the giant's weapon of choice" (Stokes, 2013, para 14). In higher education, we argue that online education has disrupted business as usual; the question that remains to be seen is whether it really is the next, best thing.

Clearly, higher education has not been asleep for the past twenty years. There are currently 132 online degree programs where at least 80% of the coursework is offered online across the MUS System and 3,865 online courses, generating 132,961 credit hours (Montana University System On-Line Education Summary Stats, 2012). Nationally, 32% of students are taking at least one course online (Allen & Seaman, 2013, p. 19). Fueling this movement towards increasing online education, at least in part, is public demand. Citing convenience and access as primary reasons for interest, approximately a third of Montanans (186,500) between the ages of 18 and 64 have some interest in distance learning (Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 2010). Interest is highest for asynchronous course offerings and, tellingly, almost half of those interested in distance learning are not interested in a degree or certification. Given the rapid pace of change, the increased access people have to education online, generally—MOOCs, iTunes University, YouTube, Coursera, TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design)—and the rural nature of the state, online education is likely going to continue to grow and to fundamentally reshape the face of higher education.

Despite the growth of online education, significant challenges remain if its potential is to be realized by both faculty and students. Undoubtedly, there are many "elephants in the room" when it comes to online education. Faculty ambivalence towards online education, the need for greater student accountability, the depersonalization of education, and a lack of training for faculty are just some of the hurdles that need to be addressed. This article represents the voice of almost forty years of combined experience teaching online. We understand that online education is not the answer to all of our problems and we are not suggesting that online education is inherently superior to traditional education; however, we will argue that online education is inherently different, encouraging faculty to try out new ways to engage and interact with students. Conversely, of course, there are things that can be done in the traditional classroom that simply cannot be done online—yet. Some of the challenges posed by online education are technical in nature and therefore require technological solutions, which are generally beyond our control as faculty. Some of the obstacles, however, are perceptual and require imagination and will to address. Given the magnitude of the changes that are occurring, we believe it is time for faculty to take online education seriously.

Before we engage in a discussion of what online education can do for us in the university system, it is important to define some terms. According to a recent survey of online education (Allen & Spearman, 2013), there is a wide variety of ways in which instructors use the internet in their teaching; for consistency we will use the same nomenclature. Traditional courses are those in which the internet is not used at all and content is delivered in face-to-face settings either orally or in writing. Online courses deliver at least 80% of the content online with typically no face-to-face meetings. In this article, we will focus on programs and courses offered fully or primarily online, but it should be noted that somewhere in between the traditional and the online are blended/hybrid and web-enhanced courses in which 1-79% of the course is delivered online. In a web-enhanced course the instructor provides materials to students using a web-based platform such as Desire2Learn and may also utilize other functions of such platforms such as grading and dropboxes to support a traditional course. Blend/hybrid courses generally require some face-to-face class sessions with a significant online component. A more in-depth discussion of online education would incorporate the many nuances suggested by the range of ways the internet can support instruction, but the primary focus of this article will be on the benefits of online education as well as the ways in which both online education and traditional education can inform and strengthen the way we educate students in higher education.

Strengths of online teaching and learning

Most research compares the effectiveness of online classes against the effectiveness of traditional classes in an attempt to determine whether online education is a valid approach to teaching and learning or an innovation that may be efficient but necessarily sacrifices quality and effectiveness to achieve that efficiency. The assumption is that traditional classes embody the standards by which we should judge the effectiveness of both teaching and learning. But perhaps we are asking the question backwards. What could we learn about teaching and learning in higher education if we used online learning as the model of effectiveness? Online learning pushes us to challenge our basic assumptions in ways that traditional education does not. We identify the limitations of online education more readily and clearly because it is new, different, and evolving, whereas we may overlook the inherent flaws and shortcomings of traditional models of teaching and learning because they are so very familiar and comfortable. In this section of the paper we want to focus on three areas that we see as strengths of online education: it has the potential to significantly expand students' educational opportunities, to deepen student learning, and to reinvigorate university teaching.

Expanding students' educational opportunities

The traditional model of education requires the student to go to college to get an education. We would not want to deny the many benefits, particularly for traditional aged students, that come from leaving home and immersing themselves in a campus environment that encourages students to push out the boundaries of their knowledge and experience. However, the demographics that supported living on campus and participating in college classes and activities full time have changed radically over the past decades. In the 21st century, more than 75% - 85% of college students are classified as commuter students, living at home or off campus and coming to campus as needed to take courses. The fastest growing group of students over the next decade is projected to be students 35 years and older. Table 1 shows the ongoing shift as non-traditional aged students outpace younger students in seeking out higher education opportunities.

Additionally, the increase in full-time student enrollment between 2010 and 2021 is projected at 12% whereas the projection for part-time student enrollment over this same time period is 18% (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013). Particularly in states like Montana, many students do not live within easy driving distance of a college or university. Access according to the traditional model, then, is limited to students who are able to relocate or to engage in long commutes. This model requires students and instructors to show up at a specific, arbitrary time, which requires everyone to schedule the rest of their daily lives around that time. Online classes and programs open up opportunities to many potential students who are place-bound. Most non-traditional students have jobs and families that make it very difficult for them to relocate. The increasing number of part-time students attests to the fact that the new norm is balancing college with full or part-time work and family demands. Online education allows students to learn at a time that best suits their lives. The ability to take all or most of the courses required for a college degree from home makes the difference between being able to take advantage of the opportunities higher education offers or not.

By making college programs available online, where one lives is no longer a determinant of what programs or degrees an individual may wish to pursue. Given the current volatility in the job market and the ongoing downsizing of business and industry, many adults are recognizing the value of online programs and courses to help them prepare for new career paths or to update knowledge and skills as they seek employment. We must keep the shifting demographics of current and potential students in mind as we experiment with the most workable balance between online and traditional courses and programs if we want to maximize educational opportunities for a broad array of types of students.

Another cohort of students better served by online education is students with disabilities. Current research indicates that students with various disabilities are not only entering higher education at a higher rate but are also opting to take courses online (Dell, 2013). Unlike in a traditional class where a student's disability may be very visible, sometimes creating barriers based on perceptions and stereotypes, neither students nor instructors may be aware that a student has a disability unless the student self-discloses. Students with disabilities can make use of many features of online learning to compensate for their disability. For example, a student with low vision who struggles to see the board or to read handouts in a traditional class can make text as large as is necessary on the computer; a student with limited mobility who finds speaking during a discussion or writing exams in a traditional class difficult may benefit from being able to compose posts to a discussion or write an exam at his or her own speed on the computer. Instructors who use Universal Design principles in designing their online classes, so that "the design of products and environments…[is] usable for all people, to the greatest extent possible" (Coombs, 2011, p. 6) further contribute to increasing educational opportunities not just for students with disabilities but for all learners.

Online education not only can make a college education or degree program a reality for students underserved by the traditional educational model but the real power of the internet, as seen in the explosion of social media and networks, is its ability to connect people across space and time. This is particularly important in a relatively homogeneous state like Montana where many people grow up and live their lives in communities with little contact with people who come from backgrounds different from their own. As the popularity of online classes and programs grows, even students in isolated areas may be learning with students from other parts of the U.S. and increasingly with students from other countries. Coming together in an environment where students' own experiences and perspectives play a meaningful part in the educational process may help build understanding and respect among people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. Global education takes on a new meaning because students really have the opportunity to learn with peers around the world.

Deepening student learning

In addition to opening access to higher education to many students of all ages, online education also can deepen and expand student learning in ways that align more readily with their own expectations for how they want to learn (Prensky, 2010). Prensky argues that today's students "want ways of learning that are meaningful to them, ways that make them see—immediately—that the time they are spending on their formal education is valuable, and ways that make good sense of…technology" (p. 3). Although Prensky is focused primarily on "digital natives," meaning technology-savvy traditional-aged students, the need to see an immediate return on their investment in time, effort, and money in college programs and degrees is perhaps even more salient to older students. We want to examine several aspects of online teaching that promote maximizing student learning.

We believe that involving students in thoughtful discussions is a critical part of the educational process, whether in a traditional setting or online. In traditional classrooms, discussions often have a "ping-pong" structure where each student participating in the discussion directs his or her comments to the instructor. Moving from a ping-pong discussion to one where students listen carefully to each other, probe their peers' thinking and reasoning, respond with additional questions, and support their own positions with credible sources is possible but rare in the traditional classroom. Because most online instructors use discussion as a major vehicle for learning, the emphasis in online discussions on thoughtful and reflective student participation helps them develop skill in critical thinking and analysis.

Students range from outgoing and extroverted to shy and introverted. The intensity of formulating a response and voicing it in front of peers can be intimidating for many students. We have all had students in traditional classes who do insightful written work but never contribute to discussions. As a result, the class never hears these students' perspectives. The nature of the online environment can bring out the best in students who are shy or lacking in confidence who ordinarily sit in the back of the room and passively listen to others discuss. Online teaching can increase opportunities for collaboration between students and between students and instructor, avoiding the ping-pong discussion structure by more deeply involving students in the learning process. Since online classes generally require and grade student participation, even students who are reticent to share their perspectives or who need more time to formulate their ideas before sharing them with peers become active participants. Online classes, then, provide opportunities for instructors not only to encourage less assertive students to participate fully, but to help them find their own voices. The asynchronous nature of most online discussions encourages students to dig deeper into their own understanding of the concepts and issues under discussion than generally happens in a traditional discussion that may last from 10-30 minutes. The result is a deeper engagement in their own learning as well as deeper understanding of the concepts and ideas being taught.

Something else that makes online teaching effective is "its ability to deliver instruction that is individualized for every student and that provides them with extensive practice and immediate feedback" (Swan, 2003, p. 3). Many educational theorists (e.g., Mayer, 2008; Schunk, 2012) maintain that in order to increase student learning, learners need scaffolding in the form of timely corrective feedback. This insures that students can adjust their skills or understanding while they are learning. From the instructor's viewpoint, online discussions, because they can be read and reviewed asynchronously, afford a greater opportunity to assess student learning and thinking and to provide prompt feedback regarding students' ideas than can be done in a traditional classroom. Thoughtfully constructed online discussions can facilitate an exchange of ideas, applications, and new insights among students regarding their understanding of the content, which maximizes opportunities for formative assessment of student knowledge. Where else can you read each student's thoughts, or gauge their level of understanding in such a transparent manner? Discussions provide the opportunity for the instructor to scaffold student understanding through questions (such as asking to clarify their thoughts on a statement or topic); feedback (such as telling a student they are correct, or how they need to adjust their thinking or understanding); and give instruction or clarification to the group about the direction the conversation is going. Instructors can provide much more focused and individualized feedback on students' thinking and developing understanding both during and in feedback on discussions online. In addition, online quizzes can be set up to give immediate feedback to students about their own level of understanding. By noting where students seem unclear or where they lack important knowledge and understanding, the instructor can readdress these points with the students and can use this feedback reflectively in planning the course for subsequent semesters.

Our final point about how online discussions support student learning takes us back to Prensky's argument (Prensky, 2010) that students want to see how learning connects meaningfully to their own experiences and interests. In a traditional class students typically take notes only when the instructor speaks. The ideas and experiential perspectives contributed by peers are often disregarded. In an online discussion, we hear much more about students' own experiences as they relate to the focus of the course. In really good discussions, students learn much more about the content because they can see how that content relates not only to their own thinking and experience but to the experiences introduced from a diverse group of peers. In a very real sense, online learning emphasizes a more collaborative learning relationship between students and their peers as well as between students and instructors.

Reinvigorating teaching

We have outlined how we see online education contributing to significant gains in student learning but we see an additional strength of online education in the ways it may encourage university faculty to explore new approaches to reinvigorate their own teaching. In our own work with online education, we have found that teaching becomes more transparent. The instructor can see the structure of a course in a way that is different and perhaps more informative than is the case with a traditional course. Since the entire course is "visible," meaning the instructor has immediate access to everything communicated to students and to their responses to what is communicated, the instructor can better determine the overall effectiveness of a course as well as note places where changes need to be made. Online teaching promotes a more reflective stance toward one's own teaching. For the instructor who finds the unique challenges of online teaching worth the investment, the payoff can be increasing expertise in teaching effectively online. What instructors learn from teaching online can then inform their thinking about their teaching in the traditional classroom as well.

Our position is that we should stop trying to decide which is better—online or traditional approaches to teaching and learning. We believe that higher education benefits from the synergy and increased opportunities for learning from a collaborative relationship between the two modalities. We are advocates for the contributions that online education makes to higher education. At the same time, our own experiences as faculty members who teach both online and in the traditional classroom have highlighted the challenges that online education introduces to our endeavors.

Challenges of online education

The strengths of online education discussed in the previous section are rendered entirely moot if instructors are unwilling or unable to capitalize on the possibilities online teaching offers. Clearly, as mentioned earlier, there are obstacles to overcome. Our experience tells us that the most significant hurdles are: the lack of faculty acceptance of online education, the need for time and training for faculty to learn best practices in teaching online, and the need for intuitive web-based learning platforms that allow us to capitalize on the strengths of online education. While certainly not an exhaustive list, we feel that if these three interconnected issues can be addressed, the potential of online education can be realized.

According to the Changing Course report (Allen & Seaman, 2013), faculty acceptance of online education over the past nine years has actually decreased in the estimation of chief academic officers (p. 27). While acknowledging that faculty acceptance is critical for the success of online education (Institute for Higher Education Policy, 2000), this report offers little that we did not already know: teaching online is challenging, at least if it is done well; it takes time, effort, and expertise that many of us do not have; and the incentives, if they exist, do not always appear to match the expenditure of time and effort, particularly if faculty do not see the benefit. And this appears to us to be the crux of the issue: are we sacrificing quality for expediency when it comes to online education?

One of the barriers to faculty acceptance of online education is the impersonal nature of technology, at least in its current form. The personal connection that perhaps drew many of us into teaching established through eye contact, body language, and informal conversations is replaced in an online environment by the subtle nuances of language. Because it is not uncommon to teach students for an entire semester without ever meeting them in person we must rethink the very nature of the instructor/student relationship. What it is possible to "know" about a student, both academically and personally, is different when we interact with that student online exclusively than when we interact face-to-face. Also, many of the intangible measures of success in a traditional education, sometimes captured in a student course evaluation, but often represented by a feeling of satisfaction that a class "went well" or that students "seemed engaged," are much more difficult to capture in an online environment, at least in the same way. The power of online education is that it should encourage us to really look at more objective measures of student learning as the gold-standard by which we measure success, whether we are teaching students in a campus class or online.

But can we trust that the students on the other side of the computer are who they claim to be? A valid concern of many faculty is that it is too easy for students to fake their identity or receive unwarranted assistance from others in an online class. While academic dishonesty is certainly not limited to online education, the lack of face-to-face accountability makes many wonder if the potential benefits of online education are worth the risk. Some of these concerns are likely to be addressed by new technologies. For example, technology is available to enable exams to be proctored remotely, work submitted can be entered into software to check for plagiarism, and students can even be identified by software that tracks their unique typing rhythm and other characteristics. There are also low-tech alternatives, such as requiring students to attend proctored exams on campus or at designated testing facilities. We believe that concerns regarding student accountability are well founded and need to be addressed if university faculty are going to embrace online education, but options do already exist that can address these concerns.

If online education is to be successful, faculty need to be given the time, resources, training, and incentives to do it well. We need to understand that the online teaching environment is something completely different from the traditional classroom and, accordingly, the skills needed to be successful in it are different. The flipside of the lack of student accountability is the lack of faculty accountability in online education. A common lament of students is that they do not experience the faculty presence in an online class in the same way that they do in a traditional class. The most likely cause of this perception is a lack of engagement on the part of the professor in the course, particularly in discussions. The natural tendency in teaching, particularly when we are being pulled in multiple directions, is to fall back on what is comfortable, regardless if what we have been doing is effective. Online teaching requires us to engage with students in a way that takes time and training to do well and faculty need opportunities and incentives to learn new methods that are made possible by these new technologies.

The last barrier is simply the availability of technology to effectively meet our curricular goals. Addressing this barrier entails both a long and short view of the future of educational technology. Looking at the long view, the general trend in educational technology has been towards increased functionality and more intuitive systems that require less training to learn. Also, increased bandwidth and cloud storage have given us access to increasingly larger amounts of data at higher rates of speed. The implication of these changes is that online education is likely to become increasingly easier to master, less impersonal, and—ironically—more similar to traditional education, particularly in terms of the modes of communication. For example, the current privileging of written communication in online education was originally a function of the limitations of the technology; today the increasing popularity of videoconferencing software suggests that we may soon be able to replace the personal in online learning. As these technologies improve, online education is likely to become less anonymous and more intuitive, and faculty perceptions are likely to change accordingly.

In the short-term, any online platform takes time and effort to learn. Even for those of us who are experienced at teaching online there are always new skills to learn, new methods to master—and not all online platforms are created equally. Faculty need online platforms, or course management systems, that are intuitive to learn, easy to maintain, and that allow us to really take advantage of the strengths mentioned in the previous section that make online education desirable—and they need them now. As with most things in life, you get what you pay for, and course management systems are no different. If faculty are given an inferior product with which to work, inferior student outcomes—and student evaluations—will most likely result. We believe that if online education is to be taken seriously then investments in technology and support for faculty are likely to yield the greatest results.

A growing body of research suggests that when online classes are held up against traditional classes learning outcomes in online classes can match, and in some situations surpass, those achieved in traditional classes (Dell, Low, & Wilker, 2010; Driscoll, Jicha, Hunt, Tichavsky, & Thompson, 2012; Wagner, Garippo, & Lovaas, 2011). However, we must recognize that just because online education provides us with potentially powerful tools for reimagining how we teach, it is not appropriate for all courses. The key to the successful integration of technology is ensuring that the technology supports one's curricular goals. Too often it seems that technology is applied to a problem without examining if the problem is a lack of technology. What we should be doing instead is examining our current teaching practices and curricula and then ask how technology can improve them. To overcome the barriers discussed in this section and to ensure that we are not sacrificing quality for expediency, we need to think about teaching and learning online differently.

Implications for higher education

The advent of MOOCs (mass open online courses) has brought the initial hope that online education would increase faculty efficiency back to the forefront of educational debate. Currently, more than a million people are taking free online courses from such premier institutions as Harvard, Stanford, and MIT (Carr, 2012). Equipped with just a computer and internet access, a person anywhere in the world can study with some of the country's most influential and distinguished professors. The story behind one of the first MOOCs offered at Stanford is instructive. Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor of robotics, had taught Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for some years, usually averaging several hundred undergraduate students a year. When he decided to offer the course online to anyone who wanted to take the course, he and his co-instructor, Peter Norvig, anticipated they might attract as many as 10,000 students. When the course opened for enrollment in October, 2011 they were shocked to find that 160,000 students had registered. Even the fact that only about 14% of those who initially enrolled finished the course was not discouraging since this was still many times more students than was typical enrollment for the course (Carr, 2012).

MOOCs such as the one developed by Thrun and Norvig have been remarkably successful at attracting huge numbers of students. Given the estimate that the average cost of a bachelor's degree is currently around $100,000 (Carr, 2012), it is easy to see the appeal. A bachelor's degree at a state institution in a state like Montana still runs upwards of $50,000 for a student living on campus. It is somewhat ironic that the dream held by university administrators that online course and program offerings would attract students to their campuses from rural areas while at the same time increasing faculty efficiency may be accurate, but students may choose to cut costs by joining the ever growing number who want to learn from the most prestigious faculty and institutions via MOOCs.

It seems unlikely that MOOCs will align with the mission statements or strategic plans of most state institutions, in large part because they do not appear to be financially sustainable. But placing MOOCs on one end of the continuum, with traditional campus-based classes at the other end, developments in online education raise interesting and important questions about our work as educators. The trend over the past decade in demanding greater accountability from colleges and universities by focusing on student learning outcomes rather than instructor and institutional inputs is challenged by MOOCs where there are no grades or degrees to signify a student has mastered the material taught in a course. A bill recently introduced in the California Senate would require public institutions in the state to award credit for online courses, including those from other institutions and private vendors, for students unable to register for oversubscribed courses (Lewin, 2013). The California bill suggests that state legislatures may take a hand in promoting the legitimacy of online education as a viable means of improving retention and graduation rates. Online education, then, has the potential to shift the determination of mastery from the instructor teaching the course to the student who must decide whether he or she has developed the knowledge and skills necessary for that particular student's needs and interests.

Higher education is at a crossroads. In January, 2013, Moody's Investors Service, a credit rating agency, issued a negative outlook on revenue sources across the board for higher education, anticipating increasingly challenging funding problems as a result of the depressed economy, decreasing revenue sources, rising student debt and default rates, increased demands for regulation, and institutional challenges in leadership and governance (Troop, 2013). The National Center for Education Statistics (2013) projects that the number of high school graduates in the Southern and Western parts of the US will increase slowly through 2021-22 compared to 2008-09 numbers but graduates in the Northeast and Midwest will decrease. While this may be good news for institutions in the West, the overall picture for higher education is less robust than has been the case in past years.

There are two ways university faculty can respond to the developing crisis in higher education: we can continue with business as usual, tinkering with the traditional model to increase both revenues and students and seeing online education as necessary to that process but not intrinsically valuable in itself, or we can see the pressures for fundamental changes in higher education as an opportunity to step outside of our preconceived notions of what higher education should look like, how we define effective teaching, and how much responsibility we are willing to share with our students. We believe that the long-term health of higher education, especially in states like Montana facing ever-shrinking budgets, requires that we embrace the disruptive qualities of online education as we re-envision teaching and learning for 21st century learners.

References

[The Montana Professor 23.2, Spring 2013 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]