Online education seems to be the future of
the education sector and it continues to grow, reports suggest. According to a
report by the Instructional Technology Council, online enrolment in community colleges
in the year 2013 saw growth even if the overall enrolment in such two- year
institutions seemed to drop. The Council is affiliated to the American
Association of Community Colleges and released this report, on online learning,
in their annual meeting.
In the year 2013, around 142 officials,
related to distance education, who responded to the survey said enrolments for
community colleges were up by 5.2%, which is lower than previous years, but
they also pointed out that in those years, the overall enrolment both in-person
and online, was higher but that was not the case in 2013. So basically the
trend has changed over the years resulting in the drop.
“Online enrollment has continued to be the
predominant source of enrollment growth in higher education during the last
nine years, and the growth in online enrollment continues to slow.”
– Instructional Technology Council's
report
Interesting stats the report revealed
The report revealed a few rather
interesting figures and facts. It shows how important online education is to
community colleges but says that is doesn’t always apply to MOOCs or Massive
Open Online Courses. The report says that nowadays it appears that colleges are
deciding against MOOCs and not going that way at all. 42% of the survey
respondents, last year, said that they had no plans of including MOOC content
in their courses and this year that figure has increased to 73%. The report
also adds that just about 3% of the colleges are actually using the content
from MOOCs in their courses.
“Poor student retention rates and public
failures...have called the appropriateness of the MOOC approach into question.
Distance educators were aghast to hear MOOC executives state that only 5 to 6
percent of their students completed the MOOCs in which they enrolled. Their
college administrators would never have allowed them to continued teaching
online with such low student retention rates.”
Some other findings & revelations
According to the report, in the learning
management system market of community colleges, the loss of market shares have
stopped. Comparing Blackboard with other products has not been easy as, it has
bought other entities like Angel, etc. over the years. However, along with the
other entities and products, Blackboard now captures 58% of the shares at
community colleges. Other products that have been gaining ground are Moodle,
that has risen to 17% this year from last year’s 14% and Instructure Canvas has
also risen in the community college scenario with 12.5% compared to last year’s
9. One product that has lost ground, considerably, is Desire2Learn.
Out of the survey respondents, 54% say
that their institutions charge a payment or fee for the distance courses they
provide. The fee varies from $4 to $75 per credit with a standard of $23.
One of the biggest challenges faced by
administrators of distance education is to provide sufficient services for
students who take up distance learning. In fact, according to the report, this
is the third year in which this challenge has been identified.
So it would be right to say that online enrolment to community colleges is on the decline but still going strong. This goes to prove that the demand for online community college courses has not stagnated completely.
