At A Distance?

A funny thing happened on the way to the electronic classroom.

In spite of our initial plans, analysis, and whatnot, students who live as close as a few hundred yards of a classroom are taking online classes. We never saw it coming.

Back in 1997, when WTAMU was first developing WTOnline (and I was preparing to be the second online prof in the fall semester), we figured that online courses would be a great way to help students who live in Dalhart, Borger, Pampa, and the extreme outlying areas, as well as perhaps recruit new students from downstate or elsewhere.

And we accomplished that with no problem.

But a few years ago we began noticing a chance in the geodemographics of our online students. In addition to students who were truly at a distance, we observed hordes of students (hmmm, imagine an electronic horde...) from within a 25-mile radius signing up as well.

We didn't know what to think.

Having been in this thing for nine years, I think I finally have it figured out. Online classes are not as much about distance learning as they are lifestyle learning. It's not just distance that separates students from classrooms, but also complicated 21C lifestyles that find people trying to cram 28 hours worth of activities into 24.

While some within the university community are still aghast at the notion of students in dorms taking online classes, I'd like to point out that convenience is of paramount importance to all of us. Life is seldom compartmentalized into the traditional 8-5 time capsule that once characterized the American living pattern.

Instead, life is 24-7. Research I have done with colleagues has shown our online students to be working 20-40 hours per week, which doesn't leave a lot of time for attending class. But if you can take a class or three online, suddenly things look better. You can get an education, work hard to pay for it, and be better off in the long run.

The irony is that at universities across the nation (including WT), traditional campus courses are also morphing into pseudo-online classes themselves. My MKT3342-01 and MKT4344-01 courses may be "on the land," but they also use the WTOnline system as the primary means of delivery for content, communication, and testing. We just happen to meet for class as well.

A recent report at FoxNews.com bears this out. There is an incredible blurring of college classes going on right now, with the old-fashioned traditional campus class with only live prof-student interaction becoming a dinosaur.

Faculty and administrators who bemoan online classes had also better tread carefully. If a university is to remain customer-centric it must abide by the needs, wants, and whims of its students. To speak poorly of online classes is tantamount to saying that one of your products stinks.

And that's just not smart marketing.

The universities that will prosper in the future will offer a broad array of both online and hybrid campus courses, and will promote both as being high-quality means of receiving an education. Faculty who understand the technology as well as their discipline can leverage both to create learning communities that can do far more than the classroom of old.

Rather than being well-preserved reflections of the past, universities and faculty must be reflections of the future. After all, we're not supposed to be navigating through the rearview mirror with our foot on the brake.

No, we should be looking through the windshield and flooring it.

Dr "Farsighted" Gerlich