Online purely for the locals?

When I was at California State University-Bakersfield, in addition to my faculty responsibilities I was also the director of the Environmental Resource Management program. Students could complete this program in the online mode, too, and the logistics of this was handled by the Extended University there. Most (all?) of the students in the online program were outside the local area--within the state, and outside. In fact, that was the prevailing rationale at that time: online was a way to bring in additional dollars.

Now, as has been the case at our own campus here, online teaching and learning is increasingly seen as primarily for the locals. Which is what this report in the Chronicle (free--no subscription required) is about:

"The regional publics, which are finding themselves more and more tuition-dependent, due to shrinking state resources, have found themselves in a very competitive environment where we need to adapt," says Robert J. Hansen, Southern Maine's associate provost for university outreach. "The average student is getting older and older, and they've got busy and very complicated lives."

Blended or hybrid courses that combine online and face time have been around for years. Now universities are surveying regional needs and blending whole programs, sometimes eliminating fully face-to-face options for courses.

Mr. Mayadas lays down a rule for localness money. At least 50 percent of classroom time must be pushed online (at the level of programs, not necessarily individual courses). How they get there varies. Some throw in fully online courses, blended courses that meet weekly, or hybrids that meet even less often.

Less Face Time

Robert J. Kaleta, director of Milwaukee's Learning Technology Center, has little doubt where are all this is going: "Three years ago, all of our degrees would have required this face-to-face contact in all courses. Ten years down the road, you probably won't have a class that requires just face-to-face contact."

I tell you, as I indicated in an earlier post, am all the more convinced that I should jump into offering hybrid classes starting in winter 2010. Try stopping me :-)