By Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
How has your experience in an online course or program lived up to your expectations? The range of options of colleges is broader than it has ever been. The online certificate and college degree programs that have emerged in the last five to seven years are so different from university experiences in the past that it is often hard to envision what the experience will be. Here are three accounts drawn from the experiences of e-learners who have tried the various options.
The Choices
For-Profit Online College
Crossing the Threshold:
The advertising for the fresh, newly updated, for-profit college is appealing. Transfer in your existing college credit, receive credit for ACE-approved corporate and military training, and finish your degree in 18 months or less. Your courses will be completely online and you will receive a generous financial aid package, with no out-of-pocket expenses until you start to pay back the loan. Everything is online – application, advising, placement tests, registration, coursework, library research. As soon as you’re admitted, which takes 8 to 10 days, you can register for courses, which begin every month. You filled out a form online to find out if you would be eligible for a scholarship. You found out you’ll be eligible for a $500 scholarship. The rest will be paid for by federal financial aid. You will not have to take placement tests or exit exams. You may even be able to submit a portfolio and obtain college credit for your life experiences.
A Year Later:
Your transfer credits and credit for experiential learning came through more smoothly than you expected, and your courses have been time-consuming and rigorous, but doable. You’ve come to realize that you’re not as much of a procrastinator as you once thought you were. In fact, you’ve made your deadlines on all your assignments. Interacting with fellow students has been fun, and you’ve saved hundreds of dollars in gas bills by avoiding a commute. You’re within two 8-week terms of receiving your bachelor’s degree and fulfilling a lifelong dream. In spite of the accomplishment, the degree itself feels oddly sterile. Even though your courses were enjoyable, you never felt a sense of affiliation with the college itself. You never once saw a photograph of a professor or heard their voices. The same was true with your advisors. They had voices, but no names. You wonder if that will change in the future and if you’ll have a more “human” experience with an online master’s program.
Traditional College with Some Online Courses
Crossing the Threshold:
The advertising for the traditional college makes your heart pound with nostalgia-generating images. You can almost hear the crunch of linebackers at the football game, smell the crisp autumn air, feel the smooth slide of old books in the reading room of a library that looks like a cross between a medieval castle and a gothic cathedral. You know that you can’t afford to move across country and spend four years in a dorm, but you’d like to be affiliated with that college and its tradition. As you comb through the website, you find that they do offer courses online. As you fill out your application (which came in the mail), write a check and put it with the forms, your essays, and recommendation letters in a bulky mail envelope, calculate the right amount of postage, you they were more flexible with their calendar.
It is March, and unless some miracle happens and you get to take a summer course as a “special student,” you won’t be able to take courses until the fall semester, which starts in late August. The tuition takes your breath away, but received a congratulatory letter saying you have been already been selected for a scholarship, which, at $16,000 per year, cuts the tuition in half. It is still much higher than the community college, but less expensive than the for-profit college. None of your courses will transfer. It will take you about five years to graduate with your bachelor’s degree. You will take an array of required and elective courses as you complete your degree requirements.
A Year Later:
Your first year of taking online courses at the traditional college has been a frustrating one. The college you have chosen has wonderful resources, but it’s still not particularly easy to get to them, if you’re fully online student. You love the online library, the online museum and galleries. However, the course management system often fails, and the school is slow to post grades, open registration, and post your payments. You have been watching playbacks of the football games on the college’s sports page, and you want to join a few on-campus clubs. After a year, you’ve come to realize that what you wanted in a college education was more than the class work, it was the interaction, the student life, the opportunity for student leadership. You’ve given notice at your work and are packing your bags for the dorms next semester.
Local Community College, with Online Courses and Programs
Crossing the Threshold:
The advertising for the community college relaxes you. The community college has an open admissions policy, their tuition is half or even a quarter of the tuition of the other colleges you’ve investigated. They have online courses, financial aid, and online enrollment. The community college even offers four-year degrees in partnership with a local college. If you want to take a face-to-face course, they have classrooms downtown and in the suburbs in a converted shopping center. You wonder if the old food court has a Starbucks as you think of the driving and giant parking lots. It’s hard to get started, since the college requires you to come on campus to take placement tests and to meet with advisors.
Your tuition and fees add up to about $5,000 per year, which is a third of the traditional college, a quarter of the for-profit. You will have to take remediation courses, which will slow you down, but they will take some of your transfer credit. You’ll be out with your associates in 18 months, and your bachelor’s degree in two years after that. As you meet with the community college advisors and talk with staff and professors, you realize that the college is serious about human capital development, and policies are formed to make sure that each student must pass standardized tests and attain minimum standards in order to take courses and to graduate. The idea of having to prove yourself at every turn is not very appealing, although you realize that at the end of the day, all students have had a fairly uniform experience, and they will be able to demonstrate competencies in foundational academic areas.
A Year Later:
Although you complained to your wife that it was insulting and a waste of time to take the placement tests, you’re now grateful for them. Knowing you’d have to take the exams motivated you to study for them, and to prepare for them by taking practice texts. Later, you took courses and found that the way they were structured made you feel comfortable with the workload. Sometimes the learning management system (Blackboard) was frustrating. At other times, you felt the instructions were too ambiguous. Overall, though, you had a good experience with all your courses, and were able to maintain a 3.5 GPA. You’re about a year away from your associate’s degree, and even though you are not too pleased with the fact that it will take you two full years to get your associates degree, you know that you needed the time to take the remediation courses you’ve taken and to develop better study skills. You plan to go on for your bachelor’s degree, but are undecided about going on for a master’s degree.
Final Thoughts
The world of online education is changing by the minute, and the experiences that one person might have with a certain type of program or college may not be a predictor of future satisfaction. The best approach is to choose a program that is right for you in terms of subject, curriculum, logistics, and finances. Then, be sure to stay in contact with the college and advisors to make adjustments if and when the program does not go as smoothly as expected.