It’s online class time

Font Size:

By Steven Martens | Monday, February 12, 2007 11:40 PM CST | () comments

(John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Kelly Zeimet, 25, sits at her kitchen counter in Eldridge, Iowa, and goes to class as an online student at Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa. She plans to complete a bachelor’s degree program in organizational management by November as she balances school, a full-time job and planning a September wedding.

CLINTON, Iowa — About two years ago, Joel Kaczinski of Clinton was facing a dilemma common among professionals.

He wanted to further his education and improve his career prospects by earning his master’s degree in business administration, but he wasn’t sure if he had the time.

“My life pretty much revolves around my kids, so it just didn’t leave many nights that I could consistently devote to taking classes,” he said. “It was important that I still be able to do everything I needed to do as a dad. I just didn’t want to have to sacrifice, missing a game, missing a Cub Scout meeting, whatever.”

On the recommendation of a friend who works at Ashford University in Clinton, Kaczinski, 45, enrolled in Ashford’s online MBA program and graduated in December.

Online education is growing nationally, and in particular at Ashford, where online enrollment grew at a phenomenal rate from 438 students in the fall of 2005 to 3,408 in 2006. Online students now represent almost 90 percent of its total enrollment, with students from 48 states.

On-campus enrollment went from 376 to 428 students in the same period.

Nationally, about 3.2 million higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2005, up 35 percent from the previous year, according to the Sloan Consortium, an organization that helps colleges and universities improve their online education programs.

Chris Spohn, vice president of admissions at Ashford, said while growing the on-campus enrollment at Ashford remains a top priority for the school, online courses meet a growing need for students.

“There’s such a demand out there, I think it’s important for us to focus on that, as well,” he said. Ashford offers online bachelor’s degree programs in organizational management and psychology, master’s degree programs in business administration and teaching and learning with technology, and an associate’s degree in business.

The for-profit college also expects to add 225 staff members and expand its physical presence in Clinton to meet the online demand.

A new kind of student

Spohn said online students tend to be people like Kaczinski, working professionals with families and little time to take night classes. The greatest appeal of online education is that the coursework can be done at any time, Spohn said.

Courses generally run about five weeks. Students have required reading and papers to write, just like in an on-campus class, and are required to participate in discussions with their classmates and professors on online discussion boards once or twice a week, but that can be done whenever the student finds time.

“It gives them a great deal of flexibility to have access to education,” Spohn said.

Kaczinski said he usually did his coursework at night.

“About the time the kids went to bed was about time I’d kick it in,” he said.

It wasn’t unusual for him to work from 9 or 9:30 p.m. until midnight or later, but he did it to keep his Saturdays free to spend time with his family.

Kelly Zeimet, 25, of Eldridge, Iowa, earned an associate’s degree from Clinton Community College in 2002 and now works in human resources at Wonder Bread in Davenport. After deciding she needed a bachelor’s degree to advance in her job, she looked at several online programs before starting a bachelor’s degree program in organizational management through Ashford about a year ago.

She said she picked Ashford because it was more affordable than many other programs.

Zeimet said she does much of her class work during her lunch hour, but also does work on her laptop at home. She said that flexibility is important for someone trying to balance school, a full-time job and planning a September wedding.

“It’s nice to be able to have a life outside of school and work,” she said.

Sitting at her kitchen counter on a recent evening, Zeimet was participating in a discussion board with the topic, “What makes a good mission statement?” for her course, Strategic Planning for Organizations.

Zeimet said her instructor and academic adviser are very prompt in responding to her questions. Although she feels she may sometimes learn better face-to-face, she is gaining a lot from the experience and has not ruled out pursuing an MBA online.

“I’ll never set foot in a classroom again,” she said.

From the teacher’s perspective

Ann Bell, the librarian at Camanche High School, has been teaching online professional development courses for teachers for three years for the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She said the flexibility online courses offer is a big incentive for teachers, too.

“During the school year, the teachers are so busy, now they can do it on their own schedule,” she said.

Bell said online courses bring together students from all over the world. During a course she was teaching about using technology in the classroom, Bell had two students who lived in Hong Kong who were working on a project about how to create podcasts of their lessons so students could access them if their school were to be closed due a pandemic outbreak.

Joan Vandervelde, coordinator of online professional development at UW-Stout, said her university has online students from all over the United States and 23 foreign countries.

“There are American people living all over the world, and they want to continue their education,” said Vandervelde, who started her teaching career at the now-closed Johnson Elementary School in Davenport before going into online education at the University of Northern Iowa, and then UW-Stout.

Vandervelde said MBA programs are particularly popular graduate-level courses, but undergraduate courses are available in nearly every field of study, and high school courses also are now available online.

Vandervelde said it also is becoming more popular for traditional, on-campus students to include an online course as part of their curriculum.

Other online campuses

The Quad-Cities campus of Western Illinois University offers an online Board of Trustees Bachelor of Arts degree program and a master’s program in industrial design and technology, and is developing more online courses and programs, said Jeanne Clerc, associate provost for the Quad-Cities campus.

St. Ambrose University currently has 190 online students in 14 courses and is developing a master’s program in pastoral theology that will consist of online courses during the academic year and a three-week summer residency, Jane Kettering of the university said.

Kaplan University, a popular online school based in Davenport since 2000, had more than 25,000 online students and 1,000 on-campus students enrolled at the end of 2006, and recently received full approval from the Iowa State Board of Education for an online master’s in education program and a Teacher Intern Certificate Program, which gives people with bachelor’s degrees in areas other than education the training they need to become secondary teachers, Kaplan spokeswoman Caitrin Muldoon said. It offers a range of certificate programs, associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees on campus and online.

Kaplan and its related campuses across the country are among the larger online college operations in the nation, with the University of Phoenix as the giant with more than 200,000 students.

Computer vs. classroom

The participation on discussion boards required in online classes force students to be more active participants in their courses than they might be in a classroom setting, Vandervelde said.

“You can’t sit in the back row of the classroom,” she said. “Every student is expected to participate.”

Kaczinski said he was one of those students sleeping in the back of the lecture hall when he started his college career at Iowa State University. He later transferred to Mount St. Clare College, now Ashford, and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

He said the online discussions helped him feel connected to his classmates.

“You get to know these people online, even though you don’t know what they look like, and you really get to know them by the time you’re through,” he said.

Zeimet said online courses do not offer the social contact between students that an on-campus class can offer, but she is more interested in getting her degree than socializing.

“I’m looking basically to get that piece of paper,” she said.

Because classmates and students may never see each other face to face, the potential exists for online students to find someone else to do their work for them. Barb Philibert, dean of external studies at Ashford and an online instructor for the school, said that possibility is no different than an on-campus student finding someone else to write a paper or go into a large lecture hall and take a test for them.

Philibert said online students’ identity is verified through the enrollment process, and although there is no way to guarantee that the student receiving the credit is the same person doing the work, she said all colleges must rely on the integrity of their students.

Zeimet said the freedom that comes with online education requires students to be disciplined if they want to learn.

“If you’re not, you’ll never make it,” she said.

Philibert said Ashford also does follow-up surveys with the employers who hire its graduates.

“If we’re graduating students who can’t get it done in the workplace, that’s going to come home to us,” she said.

Steven Martens can be contacted at (563) 659-2595 or smartens@qctimes.com.