What We Know and What We Want To Know about Online Education.

This paper begins with a description of National University's online program in educational administration for the California preliminary administrative services certificate, including an overview of the program, the development of a hybrid program that includes both online and face-to-face courses, and the geographic distribution of students. Results of a program evaluation are then presented, covering the quality of student work, the attitudes of the online students, student evaluation of the program, and the self-efficacy for self-directed learning that online students bring to their courses. The survey questions about demographic information and student attitudes are included with the mean of responses. (MES) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. What We Know and What We Want to Know About Online Education By: Gary Hoban & Beverly Neu PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY en cz IN _B. N ei 1 0el 1 CZ TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES g' 1 INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 2 BEST COPY AVAILABI F U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) toThis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ONLINE EDUCATION Gary Hoban, Ph.D., National University Beverly Neu, Ph.D., University of Southern California Introduction As the world has become more and more dependent on technology, institutions of higher education have turned to online instruction as a technique to meet students' needs for credential programs. It is estimated that 700,000 people took online courses last year. That number is expected to grow to 2.2 million by 2002 (San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2000). Colleges and universities have responded to students' enthusiasm for online instruction. Background For almost twenty years, National University has prepared students in educational administration leading to the California preliminary administrative services certificate using a traditional, face-to-face on-ground format. In the 1999-2000 academic year, National University developed an online program in educational administration for the preliminary administrative services certificate. This certificate is required to be a principal as well as to seek other administrative positions in the State of California. Since offering such a certificate program online was a significant departure in instructional delivery, not only in revising curriculum but also as a way of preparing future school administrators who traditionally engage in many personal, face-to-face training activities, there was much internal debate by the program faculty. At the outset, National University provided a training program for its instructors on how to prepare and write courses for online instruction through E-College located in Denver, Colorado. Also, a grant was written to provide additional training for the instructors writing the courses. The goal was to have all eight of the nine courses in the preliminary administrative services certificate written and online by January 2000. (The field service component of the program remained an on-ground, face-to-face course.) This goal was met. Dr. Gary Hoban, lead faculty for the educational administration program, coordinated the effort. As newcomers to online instruction, all educational faculty members at the University learned as they went along. It was a daunting challenge, but rewarding. All educational administration classes at National University online and on-ground are offered in a one month format. The classes are presented in a concentrated format and prove to be intensive for students and faculty. On-ground courses meet either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday from 5:30pm to 10:00pm for eight sessions. There is a final daytime session on the last Saturday of the month in which the class is offered. Online courses are also completed in one month as well. In the online program, however, students work at their own pace. The courses are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and instructors respond to students within 24 hours. The content of the on-ground and the online courses is virtually identical in textbooks, assignment and readings. In online classes, threaded discussions are used in each lesson to replace the face to face discussions in on-ground classes. Threaded discussions are dialogues between the instructor and the students regarding posted lectures, assigned readings, and questions posed by the instructor and students. What distinguishes threaded discussions from chat rooms is that they are asynchronous and that students can respond at their own pace and at times convenient to them. Also, students must respond to every threaded discussion topic if they are to receive credit for the course. Students often respond to their fellow student responses as well as to the comments of the instructor. Changes in Mid-Program The original design of the program was to have all eight courses presented entirely online. The online program began in February 2000, with eighteen students. In May 2000, the University was notified by its regional accrediting agency (WASC) that all of the educational administration credential courses could not be offered exclusively online. It would be necessary to have four courses offered with face-to-face involvement between the students and the instructor. Thus, a "hybrid" program was born. The hybrid educational administration program at National University requires that students work online for four weeks and meet face-to-face with an instructor on the last Saturday of the month in which the course is offered. Since the students in the online program lived throughout the state of California, this was a challenge. It was determined that there would be three sites for the Saturday class that would meet from 9:00am to 4:00pm. The sites selected were Sacramento, Fresno and Costa Mesa and students commuted to the site nearest to them. Adjunct professors were selected to provide instruction and facilitate discussions at the two sites that the online instructor could not personally visit. The online instructor was responsible for planning the instructional objectives and activities with the adjunct professors at the other sites to assure that there was academic consistency throughout the program. Students responded with enthusiasm to this plan, as the alternative would be to not offer the remaining classes online at all. Some students suggested that it would be preferable to meet sooner than the last Saturday so that they could become acquainted with their classmates. The rationale for meeting on the last Saturday is that students have covered all of the course content and can participate in a better discussion of the subject. Geographic Distribution of Students Students in both the original exclusively online courses and the hybrid online courses were distributed throughout the State of California. For the sake of organizational efficiency, even though the program is headquartered, as are all National University programs, in San Diego, the students in the hybrid part of the program were grouped according to three regional University centers, which have extensive on-ground campus facilities and on-ground educational administration programs. These centers, as noted above, are in Costa Mesa, Fresno and Sacramento. (All students, whether in the exclusively online or hybrid classes, work with faculty at one of the regional sites offering the program on-ground--San Diego, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Fresno, San Jose, Sacramento--to complete their field work.) Students who were in the hybrid program and who were clustered in the Costa Mesa region came from rural areas and inner city Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County. Some students were a few miles from the center while others were about 125 miles from it. The Fresno center serves a much larger geographical area, from Bakersfield to north of Merced, a north-south distance of nearly 300 miles in the Central Valley of California. Most of the students in this area came from the Merced area, which is about 80 miles from the University's Fresno campus. Others came from the foothill areas of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In all cases, they generally were from relatively long distances from a campus reached, in many cases, by less than friendly roads. The Sacramento center has the broadest geographical sweep of students from south of Sacramento to Redding in the north. This is a drive of approximately three hours from central Sacramento. Many students lived sixty or more miles to the east in Placer County. The Sacramento center served students from the coastal Santa Cruz area and Bay area as well. This geographical dispersion of students underscores how distance from a campus makes online instruction an attractive alternative to coming to an on-ground class twice a week. For some of the students in the program, it was the only way that they had access to a program that allowed them to work toward a preliminary administrative services certificate. There were no traditional universities in the areas in which they lived and worked or, if there were, the time constraints made attendance extremely difficult. Distance alone is not a factor which makes online instruction an attractive option. Most of the students who completed the first offering of the educational administration program, however, have done so because of the distance issue. Several chose this option because they were not able to schedule a class at their on-ground site at a time which was convenient either in terms of completing their programs in a timely fashion