Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2000). According to Weil (2001), 54% of U.S. higher education institutions are currently
offering e-learning courses. Weil cited an International Data Corporation prediction that this
will grow to 87% by 2004. Many universities are experiencing increasing pressures to offer
college courses online, partly due to competition with other colleges and universities and
offerings available through the business sector. An increasing number of traditional colleges
and universities are offering online degree programs. Many AACSB-accredited Business
schools provide courses and complete programs online. And, new schools have been created
that exist solely in cyberspace (Peltz, 2000). Students can complete undergraduate degree
programs in fields as diverse as nursing, business, engineering, and technology.
There are several possible reasons for schools offering online programs: to increase
revenues and credit hour production, to better utilize limited resources, to serve an expanded
geographic area or student population, to serve the existing student population differently,
or some combination of all of these reasons.
Students may also take online courses for a variety of reasons: location convenience,
time convenience, cost perceptions, quality perceptions, and a variety of other possible
reasons.
Some online courses have been implemented so quickly that insufficient time has been
available to allow in-depth assessment of the desires, interests, and concerns of their
potential direct customers, i.e., students. The study described here was developed to identify
students' expectations and current perceptions of online courses and programs offered by
colleges and universities. The results are expected to facilitate effective planning and
development of these courses in the future. This study focuses on perceptions of potential
students and does not attempt to measure curriculum or performance of current students.
BACKGROUND
Convenience has been widely quoted as a primary reason for students taking online
courses. Persons already in the workforce or on military bases can take courses without
interrupting careers and work schedules. And, online courses are ordinarily offered on a more
regular basis than traditional course offerings.
Critics of online instruction point out that a Web-based educational program has at least
one disadvantage in that it does not provide a forum for physical contact and live debate
between students and faculty. This viewpoint about online degrees is given by many elite
universities. They claim that it is impossible to replicate a classroom environment with online
courses. Harvard University professor W. Earl Sasser indicated that Harvard “will never
offer” an MBA degree online, because it would distract from the residential experience
(Symonds, 2001). Kumar et al. (2002, p. 140) cited “strong evidence that students perceive
interaction, student-to-student and student-to-instructor, to suffer as a result of virtual
education.”
But, many information technology professionals argue that there is little difference
between getting a degree on campus or over the Web. They point out that many traditional
colleges, including the University of Chicago and Stanford University, have initiated online
instructional programs. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) plans to post lecture
notes and reading assignments for most of its 2000 courses on the Web for free, as part of
a program called OpenCourseWare (Symmonds, 2001). And Robert Baker, a systems
consultant at Emergent Information Technologies, Incorporated, in Newport Beach, Califor-
