College students making grade in online classrooms

Monday, July 26, 2004 | 10:58 a.m.

English on the sofa, calculus in your pajamas, sociology on vacation.

That's the lure behind the online classes offered by Nevada's higher education institutions, one that drew more than 35,600 students into its Net at UNLV and CCSN this past year.

More than 13,000 students enrolled in 476 online classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from fall 2003 through summer 2004, and more than 22,000 students enrolled in 959 classes at the Community College of Southern Nevada during that time, distance education directors said. The Nevada State College did not have similar comparisons but is offering 39 online courses this fall.

Those enrollment numbers are double what they were just two years ago, distance educators said.

But as the student popularity of online courses has soared, many professors remain resistant to the concept, making it tough for local institutions to recruit enough online instructors to keep up with the demand.

"For every student we accommodate, we have to turn away two," said Charlotte Farr, director of distance education and creative services at UNLV.

Like regular classes on campus, online courses have to be capped at 25 to 40 people so that students still receive quality instruction, Judith Osterman, instructional design coordinator at UNLV, said.

One UNLV online women's studies course had 500 people try to register, she said. After CCSN enrolled 10,020 students in 413 courses this spring, students made another 44,000 attempts to sign up, Terry Norris, director of distance education, said. It's hard to tell how many students were left out, he said, as one could have tried several times to get in.

"The demand for distance education is so great that currently we aren't meeting that demand and want to increase those offerings," Norris said.

Keeping up is essential, distance educators said.

There is competition from private institutions, such as the University of Phoenix, that offer a full range of courses online.

Many students also rely on online courses to complete their degrees, they said.

A recent study by a University of California, Los Angeles graduate student found that 78 percent of students were using online courses to complete their degree, and 38 percent said they would never be able to finish without the ability to take the bulk of classes online.

"I'm guessing that for about two-thirds of the people that I have in my distance education classes, distance ed is the only way possible to earn their degrees," Mark Floyd, an assistant professor of psychology at UNLV, said.

Haunani Taylor, a 42-year-old mother of six, said she would not have been able to earn her associate's degree from CCSN without the Internet.

With a newborn baby and a full-time job, Taylor said she could not have made the commute to Las Vegas from her home in Moapa Valley for classes. And she said the online classes were as good or better than the traditional classes she took.

The computer program allows students to watch video lectures online, enter e-mail discussions, visit other Web sites and get feedback from the professor via e-mail or phone calls.

"You still have the same textbooks and the lectures but you can fit it into your life," Taylor said.

Most professors acknowledge the need for online courses, but getting them to develop some of their courses for the Internet remains one of the biggest challenges, distance educators said. Online courses represent 10 percent of the total courses at CCSN, but less than 3 percent at UNLV.

Why the resistance?

The No. 1 reason is the loss of the face-to-face interaction, and close behind it is skepticism that an online has the same academic rigor.

Even professors who teach online courses doubt the value of earning full degrees via the Internet and say that certain courses, particularly those that require in-class demonstrations, do not lend themselves to the Internet.

It also boils down to personality and personal preference, distance educators say, as some professors and students are just more inclined to excel at online courses.

"As with anything there are people who embrace it and people who are cold to it," Norris said.

Ted Jelen, a political science professor at UNLV, says he understands both sides of the debate. He says he went from a skeptic to an opportunist to a convert after accepting the $1,500 financial incentive UNLV offers to develop an online course.

"What did surprise me is that I think we are able to deliver the quality," Jelen said. "I would never have expected that before.

"However good my courses are, they are not much different online than live."

Jelen said he was especially impressed by how online courses helped improve students' writing skills, as all conversations that would normally take place in the classroom now take place in online conversation boards, where all responses are typed.

John Pulver, a CCSN sociology professor, agreed, adding that his online courses are harder, more in-depth and more rigorous than when he teaches in person because of the writing requirement.

"What I ended up having is much more thought-out and in-depth responses," Pulver said.

The interactive style of the online medium also helps combat the lack of in-person contact, other professors said.

"I think a challenge is the lack of one-to-one, face-to-face contact, but it didn't seem to present a problem," Jack L. Schofield Jr., an adjunct math instructor at UNLV, said as he taped one of his pre-calculus online lectures. "I actually ended up communicating with students more one-on-one than in the classroom."

Schofield, son of university regent Jack Lund Schofield, said his students also seemed to grasp the material more online. All of the other professors interviewed by the Sun agreed, noting that their online students got grades as good, if not better, than their in-class students.

Even the most positive proponents of online courses, however, said they believe distance education is just one avenue -- an evolution in higher education that supplements the traditional classroom setting.

"We're changing the academic culture in one sense, and I think for the better," Osterman said. "We're not taking over the academic culture. We're just another distribution point."