E-learning race: Colleges scramble to keep up with online programs

"We're not using a blackboard or filmstrips anymore," says Peter Serniak, director of continuing education at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. "More and more technology is being brought to bear for teaching purposes, and we're keeping up with it."

And keeping up with technology

As more and more technologically savvy students crowd onto college campuses, instructors and administrators are scrambling to keep up with the demand for technology-based courses.

"We've been running a small number of courses for more than a year," said Edna Wilson, dean of the University College of Fairfield University in Fairfield. "And we just created the distance education unit in our school in July" to help the Jesuit school's faculty transition into more e-teaching.

"We don't see ourselves as late in coming" to Internet-based courses, Wilson said. "It's all relative. Some places have been doing full online degree programs for a number of years. Our goal isn't to try to compete with other institutions doing four or five degrees on line," but to build "a more convenient way and alternative ways for learning."

Limits on faculty

Colleges and universities in Fairfield County are generally offering two types of e-learning-Web-enhanced classrooms and courses offered over the Internet.

Those Internet courses can be offered in two formats-synchronous, which delivers course lectures in real time; and asynchronous, where students "do it on their own time," she said.

Students enrolled in Web-enhanced courses on various college campuses can find-depending on the on the level of the e-class developed by the instructor-an array of information in the class e-file, including the course syllabus, a detailed course calendar, assignments, an online grade book, quizzes, course-related links to other Internet sites, even discussion forums where students can chat with fellow students and their instructor and, in some courses, group pages where students can work in teams on assignments.

"We don't offer a great number of online courses every semester," said Western Connecticut's Serniak. "Many of the courses tend to be filled, and there's a limit about how much a faculty member can do."

Western enhances it online offerings through the OnlineCSU (www.onlinecsu.net), a consortium of the state's four universities where distance-learning students can choose from an array of online courses and even receive an online degree from Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.

Fairfield University is one of 28 Jesuit institutions nationwide joined electronically by Jesuitnet (wwwjesuit.net). Both are tied into the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium and the state's virtual college, Charter Oak State College.

Six critical costs

Consortiums are one way colleges keep the costs of technology in check. In addition to capital costs for infrastructure, equipment and materials necessary for the courses, there are recurring costs such as information technology support, according to Business Officer magazine.

In fact, the magazine said, online courses have six critical cost areas: technology-specific costs; support personnel costs; faculty development costs; hidden costs such as telephone services and administrative support, development costs; and costs of teaching.

To support e-learning, institutions must be careful not to price themselves out of the market, the magazine said.

"Because courses are online, competition is not limited to the institution that is located 20 or even 2,000 miles away."

Western charges more for its online courses; Fairfield does not.

But online courses may not appeal to everyone, Wilson said, especially in the Northeast.

"It seems to have less appeal in this part of the country than in more remote areas, where there really is tremendous growth" in Internetbased programs, she said. "People here have a lot of options to pursue advanced degrees or lifelong learning opportunities" that aren't available in less populated parts of the country.