Blackboard-Step in Distance Learning

Distance Learning programs offer millions of people the opportunity to advance their education from the comfort of home. There are hundreds of colleges and universities that offer online training and accredited degrees with affordable tuition rates and great teachers. Do you know that distance learning has actually been around for nearly 300 years in other forms? The history of distance learning degrees is quite interesting. Some of the first distance education programs were published in newspapers, while others involved correspondence by mail.
Distance learning is very popular and growing even more common each year. A U.S. Department of Education study for 2006-2007 revealed some interesting distance learning statistics. Nearly 97 percent of public 2-year institutions offered distance education courses. Eighty-nine percent of public 4-year schools offered distance learning courses, while 70 percent of the private institutions did. Overall, there were nearly 11,200 college-level programs in the U.S. that could be totally completed by distance education. About 2/3 of these were accredited degree programs, while 1/3 were programs offering certificates.
As technology changes, so have the distance learning methods. Classes have been taught over the radio, on television, on VHS tapes, by CDs, and now even with DVDs and by Video-conferencing, Internet or even through 3G cell phones. Who knows what will be the future of distance learning? Some people think that developing holographic technologies will lead to 3-dimensional projections of teachers which could make distance learning even more common, will see.
I would like to share my own experience with one of these technological tools, which is so popular in distance learning “industry”, and what I have got by observing our students at DLI, particularly how they used Blackboard, strong and weaknesses, is it really helpful or just tool for data delivery. As you know we are using the same tool at Chapman University too.
There is a growing body of many researches that compares face-to-face with online methods of teaching. Comparing face-to-face and online courses in their entirety does not reveal the tradeoffs in efficacy among the individual course components. Knowledge about individual components is especially useful in designing a “hybrid” course—one with a combination of face-to-face and online features.
Just simply ask yourself Where, When and Why do I need Distance learning method? Here is some points, in what situation Distance Learning may be a good option for you if:
• Your daily schedule conflicts with traditional class scheduling because of work or family obligations.
• You live far from campus or do not have a way to commute.
• Your health or physical abilities keep you at home.
• You need a particular course during a quarter when the traditional course is not offered.
• Your boss tells you that the only way you can get a better job is to pursue a degree.
Our students liked the online method because it is “quick and easy” and allowed them to work at their own pace, on their own time. One might suspect that students liked the freedom from attending class, but this was not the case as other graded events occurred during class meetings. Students also liked receiving immediate feedback on their score, the correct answers to the questions, and the assurance that their grades were recorded in the grade book. Some students liked the ability to “get ahead” by completing assignments far in advance of the due date.
Students disliked the fact that they could be “locked out” of the assessment and unable submit their questions. This can occur when a student’s attempt is aborted due to an error (such as going “back” in the browser) or a lost Internet connection (common among dial-up users). Many students do not have access to an Internet-connected computer at home, and find it a hassle to make a trip to the computer lab to do homework (which highlights the value of pen & paper as a “portable word processor”). This also may explain why many students printed out the homework documents to complete the assignments and for studying. The online homework method did not save any trees but merely shifted the printing function from the instructor to the students.
The benefits come with drawbacks. A significant effort is required to put the course assessments online. Most students involved in this Blackboard-Experiment were relative “newbie’s” at using a course management system and needed considerable upfront training. This contributed to the need for significant instructor efforts to troubleshoot both student and course management software problems. Once students were successfully enrolled in and trained to use the course management system, the instructor’s effort was reduced to the relatively minor tasks of managing the assessments and the course site in general.

Interesting Facts about Distance Learning
• A 2008 study by Eduventures states that today's typical adult learner is 38.8 years of age, and has a higher income than the average American.
• According to a study by Thompson Learning, online students tend to have higher intelligence, more emotional stability, and are more compulsive, self-sufficient and introverted than traditional on-campus students.
• A 2008 study by The O'Keeffe Company and CDW-G found that 85% of students feel that mastering digital technology is an important part of their majors, and that 25% of them believe that a professor's lack of tech skills is the biggest obstacle they have to achieving their technology goals.
• Eighty-five percent of Capella University's 20,000-plus students are enrolled in graduate programs.
• Eduventures, a Massachusetts firm that does studies of educational trends, is now predicting that one out of every 10 college students will be in an online degree program by 2008.
• Several different studies have found that more than fifty per cent of online learning students are married with children.
• In 1913, Thomas Edison predicted that books would "soon be obsolete in the schools" because of motion pictures.
• For-profit schools lean heavily on part-time professors. According to The Chronicle Index of For-Profit Education, America's top 5 for-profit schools currently have 5,985 full-time faculty and 37,249 part-time professors and instructors.
• 77% of American corporations now use online learning, often blended with traditional teaching styles. In 1995, only 4% of corporations were using online learning
• Yale University recently announced it will create digital videos of undergraduate lecture classes and make them available online to the public at no charge.
• Some very well-known colleges have failed in their efforts to create online divisions. Temple, New York University and Columbia have all had e-learning flops. Columbia, in fact, spent $15 million to start an online program that was eventually closed down.
• During 2005, over 1.2 million adult students were signed up for purely online degree or certificate programs, according to Eduventures.
• Market analysts at International Data Corp (IDC) predict that the worldwide market for corporate e-learning will rise from $8 billion last year to $26 billion by the year 2010.
• 65 percent of American graduate schools now offer online courses.
• About 2,500 for-profit schools are accredited to offer federal student aid.
• The Gartner Group says that by 2008, 41 million corporate employees will be functioning in a “virtual workplace” at least one day every week.
• The number of students seeking a higher education is expected to grow by at least 13 per cent between now and 2015, adding an additional 2.3 millions students to colleges and universities, according to the Education Commission of the States. It is possible, however, that college enrollments could increase by as much as 50 per cent, for a total of 8 million more students by 2015, the ECS says.
• The United States currently spends more money on higher education than any other industrialized nation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation.
• The University of Phoenix is today the largest private university in the U.S., with almost 300,000 students on 150 different campuses. Phoenix also has well over 200,000 taking its degree courses online.
• Every year, between 6 and 8 billion dollars is spent placing and servicing computers in American K-12 schools.
• Traditional 18 – 22 year olds living on the campus of a four-year college or university actually now make up only 16 per cent of America’s higher education population, according to the U.S. Department of Education. A majority of students today are either studying part-time, attending two-year institutions or over the age of 22.
• Michigan was first state to require all students to take some online learning to graduate from high school in 2006.
• Approximately one in six students enrolled in higher education - about 3.2 million people - took at least one course online in the fall of 2006, according to The Sloan Consortium.
• According to Newsweek magazine, the ten most “wired” colleges in the US, in order, are:
1) Villanova (where first-year students get laptops, and replacements after their second year)
2) MIT
3) Indiana University
4) Swarthmore College
5) Creighton University
6) The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
7) Michigan Technological University
8) University of Southern California
9) Quinnipiac University
10) The University of Oklahoma
• C.I.A. recruiters say that 5 percent to 10 percent of their new employees completed at least some of their schooling online.
• Boeing estimates that of its 2,293 employees who earned a degree in 2005 while on the job, 40 percent completed their course work online.
• According to the Association for Computing Machinery, jobs in computing will grow more than jobs in any other career category from now through 2014.

Informational support:

Distance Learning: Technical Readiness, Blackboard Readiness http://www.ololcollege.edu/DL_Readiness_Survey.htm
Success Degree, http://www.successdegrees.com/interesting-facts-about-distance-learning.html
Digital Library and Archives - http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/
Education Journals Online - http://www.scre.ac.uk/is/webjournals.html