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"Covering Innovation and Best Practice in Online Student Communication"

Journal of College Student Retention and Recruiting for both On-Campus and Online Universities



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RANKING ONLINE DEGREE PROGRAMS?
A commercial directory provider is offering rankings of online degree programs. Data on 8 criteria from a variety of sources were used for the ranking, including: acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, and retention rate. While this is far from a comprehensive assessment, it presents some interesting ideas: Read about their methodology


DISTANCE EDUCATION RESOURCES

The Presidents' Forum calls for regionally accredited, adult-serving institutions that have some or all programs offered online to join together in a voluntary commitment to a set of Principles of Good Practice.


The New York Times Knowledge Network. A new learning and networking platform combining the resources of The Times with educators from leading institutions.


USDLA - United States Distance Learning Association serves the needs of the distance learning community by providing advocacy, information, networking and opportunity.


The Distance Education and Training Council promotes sound educational standards and ethical business practices within the correspondence (distance education, online education) field.






The COIL Conference on Online International Learning – Part II

Why international students don't love our online degree programs

Globalization is a fundamental shift akin to the agricultural and industrial revolutions that dramatically changed the world in the past. The so called information age is upon us and a primary result of this open platform is globalization. As distance is no longer a barrier to trade, communication or exchange, we as a world are drawn together. Education visionaries see an opportunity to extend the benefits of western-style education beyond U.S. borders, which has precipitated the emergence of global learning networks.

COIL graphic America has always been a popular destination for international students. Today more than 600,000 foreign students are enrolled in American universities, providing a vibrant influence on the research and academic discourse and some 200,000 American students per year study abroad. Included in each of these numbers are exchange students, in essence a swap, the foreign student visits the U.S. school for a semester or year while the American student takes their place overseas. As we discussed in last week's column, this full immersion, while growing in popularity, takes a great effort to support and will take dramatic efforts to significantly increase participation.

Collaboration between U.S. and international universities exposes faculty to curricular advancement and students to business, cultural and language differences. Two programs receiving accolades are:

  • The Global Classroom Project, a partnership between Georgia Tech and five international schools, provides a forum in which students and faculty at Georgia Tech and international universities participate in digital classes to support discussion, information-sharing and collaboratively developed projects. An example of a collaborative course is "Media studies" where students observe and discuss how media in various countries cover a single event.

  • The Transatlantic Project, a partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and a university in Munich, Germany, was devised to design software for a real client located in a third country. Students must address distribution issues and face challenges introduced by cultural standards and differing time zones using groupware and videoconferencing.

On the surface, such broad reaching, open-ended initiatives would seem to be popular. Provide linkage to an American degree and we would think that international students would naturally flock to such a program. With the tremendous increase in online course offerings, one would think that international students are pouring into online classrooms, but that does not seem to be happening.

Online courses in the United States are growing in numbers as demonstrated by this powerful statistic: One in every five college students took an online course last year.

This recent statistic relates to courses, not matriculations. The number of students enrolled in an online degree program is far less, and as a group, online students have been concentrated at just a few schools. Early approaches to building global learning networks consisting of broad-based university partnerships failed. Big scale global online universities have yet to become financially viable. Columbia University lost more than $25 million in its venture called Fathom, which it shut down in 2003. In the UK, another country with a vibrant international student community, the e-University lost $100 million and was shut down in 2004. Cardean University, an American collaboration failed as an independent organization and is now evolved into Ellis College, significantly smaller than originally envisioned.

In each of these cases, despite the prevailing logic, international students failed to enroll. Today, international student enrollments represent a fraction of the students enrolled in online degree programs at American accredited universities. This fraction is believed to be even smaller than the number of foreign students on American campuses and a demographic that confounds those marketing these programs. With the difficulty in obtaining an American student visa, one would think that foreign students would flock to online alternatives.

The most often cited example to explain why foreign students are not filling our online classrooms is cost. Even with a weak dollar, $250 per credit hour courses from a public university or $500 per credit hour courses from a private university are beyond the reach of most foreign families. UK, Australia and other western educational systems are facing the same problem. An industry standard of charging the same for an on-campus course, as an online course seems to be at the core of the sluggish demand of foreign students. - Maybe the online international market is not about mass marketing, - maybe these students don't just want an American course or an American degree, they want an American experience that giant online universities have been unsuccessful in creating that experience.

"We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment." John Dewey,
One segment that does seem to be succeeding with international students is occurring through partnerships. Tightly managed cohorts that incorporate modularity, a mix of facilities and resources at home with knowledge abroad are growing. Partnerships seem to be succeeding because they address the cultural differences with foreign students and their American counterparts. Partnerships help assure that all sides of this dynamic learning environment can prosper and benefit all.

Online education has a bright future, but is not a magic solution. To achieve the vision of empowering more of the world's population through education, online educators need to continue to build bridges and adapt their offerings to fit the uniqueness of their target audience. Programs that work in Kenya are not likely to be met with similar success in Finland, Iowa or any other locale.



Like this article? - Read similar topics:
Online International Learning
The BlogAbroad Experience



Additional sections of this journal address student recruiting and student retention. We have also placed all articles with a common theme of Innovative Practices in Communicating with Students in a separate portal. New articles will be posted each Monday, please check back by bookmarking this site or placing a link to this online education and distance education programs portal.

Mark Shay is the founder of EDU - a leading academic advertising provider, - part of Halyard Education Partners, a leader in student lead generation and enrollment management services.