Community colleges appear to be focusing on hybrid courses—a mix of distance learning and seat-time at a brick-and-mortar classroom—and less on courses that are exclusively online.
Sixty-five percent of responders to an annual survey by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC) said they offer classes that are completely online. That’s down from 75 percent in the previous survey. Meanwhile, 21 percent of participating colleges offer hybrid or “blended” courses—up from 15 percent last year.
Of the colleges that offer hybrid courses, 71 percent said they are continuing to increase courses each term.
“This was the first time that there was a dramatic uptick” in hybrid courses reported on the survey, said Fred Lokken, author of the ITC report and associate dean of the WebCollege and Academic Support Center at Truckee Meadows Community College (Nevada).
More community colleges may be offering hybrid courses as a way to improve the student retention rates of their online courses, which have historically been low, Lokken said. Some students may not be ready for courses that are exclusively online, so colleges are using hybrids to prepare them to make the transition, he said.
Colleges may also be offering more hybrid courses as a strategy to help instructors uncomfortable with teaching online adapt more readily to it, Lokken said. The demand for online education programs is so great that many colleges have exhausted their pool of faculty who want to teach online, and they now must find ways to ease the transition for instructors less enthusiastic about distance learning.
“Just like (online courses) are not for every student, they are not for every faculty member,” Lokken said.
Wanted: more online instructors
The faculty shortageis reflected in the ITC survey. Colleges are having an increasingly hard time finding qualified online faculty to teach, especially when recruiting from the local community, according to the survey. Competition from for-profit colleges is also contributing to the problem.
The shortage is prompting colleges to reconsider where their faculty are located. Forty percent of survey responders said that their college allows full-time faculty to be off-campus in another city or state. ITC, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges, said this is a significant shift, as it represents a cultural change on many campuses, where officials typically prefer a physical office and set office hours for instructors.
The survey also shows that administrators now see training as the biggest challenge regarding distance-learning faculty. Since 2004, the annual survey has ranked workload issues as the top concern. It has now dropped to the second spot.
Keeping up with student services
Despite budget cuts and staff reductions, community colleges continue to expand services to students who are increasingly taking online courses, the survey shows. The services for online courses include not only online support for students but also helping students in person.
In 2010, 81 percent of survey participants said they offered a campus testing center for distance education students, compared to 76 percent in 2009 and 69 percent in 2005. Online counseling and advising edged to 60 percent, compared to 57 percent the year before and 49 percent in 2005. Online tutoring jumped to 71 percent from 65 percent in 2009 and 44 percent in 2005.