As a student at Tyler Junior College and an employee of its computer-help desk, Jeff K. Powers has seen firsthand what can make distance-education courses go awry.
After successfully completing two distance courses, Mr. Powers dropped an online astronomy class in mid-semester. The instructor was teaching online for the first time, and had not set up the course work and laboratories properly. The laboratory experiments were based on calculations that could not be performed easily on a computer, and there was little guidance beyond the textbook.
Several students dropped the course. "It wasn't worth the headache," Mr. Powers says. "The instructor wasn't a bad teacher. He just did not have the experience with online courses."
Mr. Powers also has seen experienced and successful online instructors lose large numbers of students for reasons beyond their control. "I think the type of student who takes an online class is one that is trying really hard, but sometimes gets in over his head," he says. He knows this from personal experience, he says -- he juggles a full-time job at the help desk, his classes, and helping to care for his young child.
Whether the students who leave distance education do so because of busy schedules or because their teachers are inexperienced in online teaching is becoming a critical question in higher education. As more colleges use distance courses to attract new students, administrators are trying to figure out how to keep those students enrolled.
If distance learning can be used to improve completion rates in courses and academic programs, many more educators may embrace it. But the jury is still out.
No national statistics exist yet about how many students complete distance programs or courses, but anecdotal evidence and studies by individual institutions suggest that course-completion and program-retention rates are generally lower in distance-education courses than in their face-to-face counterparts.
Some administrators and faculty members attribute the lower rates in distance-education courses to demographics, saying that distance-education students are often older, and thus busier, than traditional college students. However, others in academe blame the nature of distance education, arguing that online and television courses will never be able to supply the personal interaction that some students crave.