YES
Spencer Schein:
The verdict is not in on online learning

The academic community has not reached a consensus on just which courses are appropriate for online instruction. Since individual colleges must have the right to decide which courses they will accept for transfer credit, they must be able to distinguish between online and conventional courses.

The "need to know" becomes more pressing as conventional colleges begin to offer entire programs online. Students may be declared to be graduates of X University without ever having received the benefits of X's student services, had access to X's special collections or resources, or been enriched by the varied and valuable student activities X provides.

It is not only the academic community that has a need to identify online courses. According to a recent study by Vault.com, cited in "A Campus of One," by Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn, in the January-February 2001 issue of Mother Jones, 77 percent of human resource officers surveyed did not consider an online-only degree the equivalent of a degree earned in classrooms on a campus.

Even for individual courses, there are differences between online and face-to-face versions that really make a difference. Consider, for example, the asynchronous nature of the class. One aspect of the educational experience that must be discarded is the Socratic method, for that requires a real-time dialogue with students. The teacher must be there with the students to rephrase questions and answers, provide relevant clues, remind students of previous discussions or conclusions, and notice when misunderstanding takes place.

Another significant difference is the set of skills emphasized by online and conventional courses. In asynchronous online courses, the students communicate with the teacher and with each other via e-mail, either individually or in groups in chatrooms. The emphasis on reading and writing, rather than listening and speaking, is frequently cited by proponents of online education; and one frequently hears of the benefits of relative anonymity in bringing out shy students. But let's not forget that the students are communicating via e-mail. We are all familiar with the lack of attention many individuals--including our students--pay to grammar, spelling, structure and style when sending e-mails. Are their writing skills being enhanced in place of the listening, speaking, note-taking and thinking-on-your-feet skills that are developed in good conventional classes?

Online education differs from conventional classroom education in significant ways, both positive and negative, just as earlier forms of correspondence education did. It is only honest to identify the different types of courses in our catalogs and on our students' transcripts.

NO
Ray Schroeder:
Online courses are mainstream and here to stay

Online classes are appropriately becoming part of the mainstream of offerings at many of our institutions, and I strongly believe that they should be treated no differently than the "on ground" offerings. You don't need ivy and musty classrooms to bring rigor and high levels of interaction to college learning today.

On our modest campus in Springfield, Ill., nearly one-third of the full-time faculty members have taught online. This semester, 10 percent (nearly 800) of our enrollments are in online classes. We are reaching out to students in rural Illinois and beyond who because of geography, employment, family obligations, disabilities or other reasons cannot physically come to our campus to meet in class sessions.

Our online classes as a rule are taught by full-time tenure-track faculty members who, in most cases, have taught (or are simultaneously teaching) the identical classes in face-to-face mode on campus. These faculty members use the same textbook, the same handouts, the same reserve readings, the same tests, the same research assignments, and conduct the same discussions online as they do in their on-campus sections. The classes are evaluated with the same instrument that is administered on campus. And, the results are largely the same. Grade distribution, student evaluations, quality of research papers, etc., are quite similar, and in some cases higher, than those in the analogous on-campus sections. Class discussions are often more robust online than on campus; this past term, my two-credit-hour undergraduate class discussions amassed more than 2,500 postings for our weekly interactions.

More and more often, we are finding mixed-mode classes, which are delivered in both online and on-campus sessions. At the University of Central Florida, for example, a large number of classes meet a reduced number of hours on campus in return for online sessions. So, three-credit-hour classes might meet one or two hours on campus and the equivalent time online. These hybrid delivery classes utilize the strengths of both methods of delivery in achieving a quality educational experience for the students. I wonder how these classes would be designated in such a system?

In sum, it is the faculty member, not the delivery medium that determines the quality of the course. It is the quality of instruction, engagement and interaction provided by a skilled and dedicated professor that leads to excellence in the learning experience. We should highlight the excellence of our faculty members rather than the medium through which they teach.