An Assignment Submitted by
Executive Summary
The current research evaluates the option of online education in the community colleges. It is believed that the online programs may benefit the students and the educational facilities in terms of cost-efficiency and effectiveness. The main goal of the research is to reveal if online courses in community colleges have the potential to reduce costs for education and become an effective substitute for the conventional programs. In order to reach the goals, the study implemented a qualitative research design by using literature review as the tool for collecting the data, where the analytical and deductive methods served as the instruments for analysis of the information. The findings determined that online education today has a lower quality comparing to the face-to-face education programs in terms of attendance, withdrawal rates, and academic outcomes. The research recommends the educational facilities to increase the quality of support and collaboration with the students to improve the quality of online programs.
Introduction
For a very long time, governmental financial support of higher education in the U.S. has been particularly scarce. Consequently, public educational facilities had to raise tuition, enhance the quantity of students in the class, decreasing programs, and introducing new solutions for maintaining cost efficiency. At the same time, colleges started to increase the number of students willing to undergo learning through the distance education, where the online course work is utilized as the main tool for access to the education. Online education helps to reduce expenditures spent on the staff, materials, equipment for the students, and space for organizing lessons. The sustainable solutions in the education increased their popularity in the wake of the last economic downturn that required a new approach in all fields, including the education. It is considered that online education is more cost-effective than the face-to-face courses in the reason of economy of time, resources, and space.
For the students, online education is also more profitable, as it is cheaper, there is no need to move to another location or visit the lectures/seminars, and it is possible to save funds on stationary materials. At the same time, while logic dictates that online courses may be cheaper, there is little practical evidence supporting this claim. Moreover, there is a gap in the research regarding this topic, as the researchers seem not to pay much attention to this subject matter. A lot of cost feasibility studies are outdated, as due to inflation and change in the economic system, modern costs for the online education may vary from state to state and college to college. For instance, Schiffman (2005), who evaluated the online programs nation-wide, claimed that the development costs for online education may vary from $10,000 to $60,000 per program. The study implemented in 2012 involving 25 higher education facilities revealed that online education better satisfies the requirements of the students, rather than provides cost-saving approach (Bacow et al., 2012). Moreover, a lot of interviewees were sure that the online courses were as expensive as the conventional education, not only because of high start-up costs, such as investments in the technology and training of the specialist but also due to recurring expenditures that require technical support.
Method
The current research aims to investigate the option of the online learning within the settings of the community colleges. The primary focus of the inquiry is the effectiveness of online courses for the students and cost-efficiency for the educational establishments. In order to reach the aims of the research, the qualitative research designed is applied, where literature review of the previous studies serves as the method of collecting the data. The analysis of the information is accomplished through the deductive techniques.
Criteria
Certain criteria were used for the inclusion of the research studies into the evaluation. First of all, the current inquiry aims to evaluate the modern state of the online education, thus, the studies selected for the research were written in the last several years. As there is a huge gap in the literature, some of the earlier research was included as well to show the progress of the studies regarding this topic. Also, one of the criteria for inclusion was the relevance and the assessment of the real cases where community colleges were evaluated regarding their options in the online education. The literature was limited to the studies conducted in the U.S. due to the specificity of the American educational system.
Discussion
At the first glance, it is quite difficult to see the pitfalls of the online education, as it seems to be more technology savvy, time-saving, and sustainable in terms of using the space and resources. However, the development of the online program, if it is an innovation in a particular college, will require certain costs, time, and effort. At the same time, not a lot of studies were longitudinal in order to see the long-term effect. It is possible to assume that the development of online program will pay off after a certain period of time and the costs for the programs may be reduced. In addition, studies of online education costs did not consider the effectiveness of the programs, thus, it may imply that online education producing high completion rates and efficient learning outcomes demand immense investments to design and operate the program. Another assumption in the argument of cost-effectiveness claims that online courses generate equal learning outcomes as the face-to-face education. Unfortunately, this implication is based on weak evidence. It has to be noted that a lot of research compared student performance between online and face-to-face education, but the majority of them are qualitative and descriptive inquiries that did not involve the participants and control groups.
Cost-Efficiency and Effectiveness of Online Learning
When evaluating the cost-efficiency and efficiency of the online education, it is necessary to take into account the relationship between the demands of the students and the proposition of the college, including the sufficiency of its face-to-face studies, the quality of training of the staff, as well as the credentials of a particular community college. At the same time, it is important to remember that the community college cannot be compared to the education in the private universities in terms of effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the online programs. Unfortunately, community colleges serve as the additional resource of higher education for the students who cannot afford more prestigious university, where the quality of the education and qualification of the professionals is way higher than those in the public colleges.
Findings of several studies of this kind revealed that online learning at least is not harmful, yet its effectiveness is questionable. It was indicated that around 20 to 30 percent of the students of the community colleges tend to withdrawn from the online education, according to the research conducted among students across the country (Beatty-Guenter, 2002). Therefore, it was revealed that course persistence and completion is an essential indicator for the community college education, where the majority of the applicants are low-income individuals, a lot of them are working or have family members depending on them, and few can afford the time or money to revisit the program if they missed or failed to undergo it.
Although, it is unclear if the small variety of courses presented in the previous research reflect the current reality. It is quite difficult to say if a lot of the community colleges propose online education and what the costs are. There was no breakdown of expenses in the community colleges across the U.S., so as the evaluation of the quantity of available courses for the students. According to Williamson, Brooks, & Ross (2015), who conducted a qualitative research among the students, the online programs in the country are more popular among adults and international students. The flexibility and convenience of the online programs attract not only the in-state students but also those who live in a different state, where the costs for the programs may be higher. Also, it is still essential to prepare the specialists for every course as well as to allocate the time for checking the works, communicating with the student, designing new tasks, and updating the program. These functions require substantial time and financial investments, which may make the online education as expensive as the face-to-face courses.
In order to understand student performance in a random online course, it is important to compare a large list of online programs with the set of face-to-face courses of the same colleges. Unfortunately, only one research was conducted in this direction. Yet, Xu & Jaggars (2011) created a quantitative research involving students from Virginia, who despite the fact were numerous, still were chosen from one particular state. The study found that students performed worse in online programs regarding course persistence and final results (Xu & Jaggars, 2011). At the same time, the limitation of the research included entry-level English and math programs, where it is difficult to generalize the results of the research. Consequently, the results of this inquiry can still be the result of selection bias. Yet, it is important to admit that it is quite difficult to involve a large sample from different colleges from various states, where the permission to access the scores of the students and substantial resources are required.
One of the latest studies conducted in this direction managed to dedicate the inquiry to the same matter and to create a follow-up study aiming to reveal if the results of Xu & Jaggars (2011) are applicable for the larger sample. Therefore, Xu & Jaggars (2013) decided to implement the same strategy and evaluate the colleges located in Washington region, involving 124,371 course enrollments among 18,569, where 22 percent of them were attending online courses (Xu & Jaggars, 2013). The results detected that online format had a substantial negative effect on course persistence and course grade (Xu & Jaggars, 2013). According to the practical implications of this study, “these results indicate that on average, for a given student, taking a particular course in an online rather than face-to-face format would increase his or her likelihood of course withdrawal by 6 percentage points”; when the student remains to the end of the program, the experience in the online courses will lower his/her or her final grade by 0.3 points (Xu & Jaggars, 2013).
Drawbacks of Online Programs
The reasons for these results may indicate different factors affecting the cost-efficiency and overall effectiveness of the courses. First of all, community college students are usually less prepared than their counterparts who choose to enroll into the face-to-face programs. Also, there is a possibility that students may encounter with the technical difficulties of the online programs, where the main task of a college is to become more susceptible to technical difficulties. Benson (2007) implemented a survey among the African-American students in the online programs, which determined that the majority of them were low income and suffered from unemployment after they graduated from online programs. The students may also lack time management abilities as well as the independent learning skills that are crucial for gaining success in the online education. In addition, the lower performance of the students may point to the lower levels of teacher presence. Anyway, the effectiveness of the online education depends on the students and their skills or motivation.
A research conducted among the students of several agricultural education by House, Weldon, & Wysocki (2007) revealed that they find online education in their universities inadequate due to low quality of the courses. However, it is essential not to leave alone the responsibility of the college to provide an effective design and support during the course. As the practice shows, many online instructors are simply converted to the PowerPoint presentations, which in the class would be explained and interpreted by the professor. This method does not allow students to participate in the learning experience and to be the part of the lecture, where he/she could listen and ask questions if something is not understandable. Also, inability to be the active part of the lessons devalues the main point of the education limiting it only to the necessity of obtaining a certificate, rather than learning and developing. Fletcher (2012) conducted a survey among 50 educational facilities in the U.S. that produced unexpected results claiming that the students were not satisfied with the quality of the courses due to the lack of practical exercises and insufficient support. In this case, the students will have to process and interpret the knowledge on their own. The main point is that in the age of technological revolution and accessibility of the information, the students may find the necessary information on their own if they have the ability to self-educate themselves. In this case, the value of online courses in the community college will be very low.
Decisions to Improve Online Learning
However, despite these problems and specificities of the online education, online education is an important strategy to foster the accessibility of the courses as well as the flexibility in higher education, especially what concerns the community colleges. The online education still has several benefits for the students and the institutions. Students will enjoy the comfort of online learning when it is possible to accomplish at home or any other place with the internet connection. The colleges usually give access to the online library where the students may find all needed resources for the learning. This convenience is particularly important for students who have dependents or cannot attend the college due to the employment. Yang & Arjomand (1999) conducted a qualitative interview among the attendees of the online programs implying that half of the students preferred to undergo at least half of their program face-to-face in order to get to know the professors better. For example, a woman working in the full- or part-time job as a maid may want to increase her professional skills in the field of hospitality by undergoing several courses, which will help her to graduate from college and apply for a better position in the market. It concerns all adults that started to think about the improvement in their career and having not enough costs for the university, online education in community college will benefit both the students and the facility.
Also, online modalities allow colleges to propose additional programs for the students increasing the access to the resources and boosting the number of enrollees in the University. Overall, the college will be able to increase its clients and to improve the financial situation, which will allow the college to design better solutions and present financially-savvy decisions in the institution. By conducting a preliminary study among educators of the online programs, Paul & Cochran (2013) found out that the teachers were not satisfied with the online courses as well claiming that they were forced to design them without necessary technical support. The increase of online courses can make the college more independent from the governmental support. Finally, in order to boost the enrollments, colleges have to meet the requirements of the students, by making the programs more flexible, time-saving, and full of necessary information. As the studies report, the modern online courses may not contain all needed data or be less informative as they are advertised. This specificity points to the negative effectiveness of some of the courses as well as the lack of support provided to the students.
At the same time, the value of benefits provided by the online courses will become particularly important characteristic of higher education. Consequently, community colleges have to take action to ensure that attendees of online courses perform on the same level as those enrolled in the conventional programs. Specifically, community colleges will have to develop necessary infrastructures to support all students, according to the research conducted among the community college students (Edgecombe et al., 2013). Online courses have to be designed through the team effort, as according to the reports, well-designed online education is often developed by several specialists, who would be able to provide online support, control the students, monitor the grades and their efficiency levels, as well as to instruct them effectively according to several studies conducted several years ago (Alvarez et al., 2005; Hawkes & Coldeway, 2002).
Recommendations
However, as the practice shows, in community colleges due to the lack of staff, each specialist is left to design the programs on their own and express their concern regarding the necessity to learn technical characteristics, as the interview among the university educators revealed (Pagliari, Batts, & McFadden, 2009). The specialists responsible for the design of the programs have to provide necessary support to the students. The teachers may check the works and provide further assistance in writing an assignment, yet a small number of the support team tries to resolve a difficult issue with the students in terms of their understanding of the material. The main solution here is to propose the services of tutoring to all students as individual support which can be provided for the additional payment. According to the quantitative research conducted by Compora (2003), the teachers can provide advisory support and counseling, increase the access to the library support services, and improve faculty office hours that in campus available only during the working hours. This specificity will be a drawback for the students who have to work or to take care of their family members. The design of the online programs does not mean that everything will be only online and the college will not have to deal with the students face-to-face. However, it is not always possible and some of the students will need to attain professional help by communicating with the professors. One of the decisions here is to implement the communication through the online resources, like Skype or other solutions. Therefore, the colleges have to allocate needed resources for such students, like creating a separate team who will be dealing only with the online students. Nowadays, the supports are provided on a passive basis despite the need to integrate a 24 help for the online students, as the study of the online programs revealed (Karp, 2011).
Conclusion
The current research revealed that the online courses are less effective than the face-to-face courses regarding the attendance and produced results. Cost-efficiency and effectiveness of the online education are still a topic of conversation, as the practice shows that online courses are not that time- and money-saving as they are usually advertised. The online education lacks the presence of the teachers, sufficient support to the students, and the quality of design of the programs. However, this option is still a better solution than the conventional learning for people with low income or those who are busy with work or child-bearing. More research linking specific aspects of course quality with the students’ performance is required. Also, researchers should work to evaluate the costs associated with online education, especially on the online education proposing high-quality learning possibility. Until such research is conducted, it will remain unclear if online education is required for the community colleges.
References
Alvarez, D. M., Blair, K., Monske, E., & Wolf, A. (2005). Team models in online course development: A unit-specific approach. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 8(3), 176–186.
The research concerned the support provided to the students during the online courses. According to the report provided by the research, the teachers do not grant necessary support to the students.
Bacow, L. S., Bowen, W. G., Guthrie, K. M., Lack, K. A., & Long, M. P. (2012). Barriers to adoption of online learning systems in U.S. higher education. New York, NY: ITHAKA S+R.
The research revealed that the online programs are not cost-efficient as their cost is usually close to the face-to-face courses. Therefore, it was concluded that the students can choose the online program due to different reasons.
Beatty-Guenter, P. (2002). Why distance education? Mimetic forces in institutions of adult education. Paper presented at the 21st Annual National Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, Toronto, Ontario.
The report claimed that the withdrawal of the students from the online programs is a problem. The main reason for this, according to the researchers is inadequate support provided by the colleges.
Benson, A. D. (2007). An Exploratory Study of Online Postsecondary Education for Low-Income Working Adults: A View from Education Support Programs. The Journal of Negro Education, 76(1), 17-22.
Benson emphasized that the majority of the enrollees in the online program consists of the low-income individuals. The study claimed that it is essential to reexamine the courses in terms of its design and support.
Compora, D. P. (2003). Current trends in distance education: An administrative model. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 6(2). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer62/compora62.html
The researcher evaluated the quality of the online programs, establishing several recommendations for the teachers. According to the study, the educators have to design the education better in terms of readability and make the programs more informative.
Edgecombe, N., Barragan, M., & Rucks-Ahidiana, Z. (2013). Enhancing the online experience through interactive technologies: An empirical analysis of technology usage in community college. Unpublished manuscript.
The researchers evaluated the technological support of several online programs. The study revealed that a lot of colleges apply interactive technologies in the exercises provided to the students.
Fletcher, J. (2012). Five Easy Pieces: Today, around 50 Higher Education Institutions Provide Online Graduate Programs in Educational Technology. How Can You Decide Which One Is Right for You? Experts Identify Five Elements for an Online Master's in Ed Tech Program. T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education), 39(5), 38-44.
The researcher is quite optimistic about the online education in the U.S. Fletcher claimed that in the IT education, online format is the best option.
Hawkes, M., & Coldeway, D. O. (2002). An analysis of team vs. faculty-based online course development: Implications for instructional design. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 3(4), 431–441.
The study revealed that team-based online education is more effective comparing to the programs designed by teachers alone. The researchers concluded that several specialists have to be involved in the process of development.
House, L., Weldon, R., & Wysocki, A. (2007). Student Perceptions of Online Distance Education in Undergraduate Agricultural Economic Programs. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 39(2), 275-288.
According to the research, students were dissatisfied with the online education. The main reason for such feedback, according to the research, is insufficient academic results.
Karp, M. M. (2011). Toward a new understanding of non-academic student support: Four mechanisms encouraging positive student outcomes in the community college (CCRC Working Paper No. 28, Assessment of Evidence Series). New York, NY: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
Karp claimed that the positive results of the students result from the colleges’ policies and efficacy of programs. Also, the study concluded that the educators have to support their students in terms of supervision and coaching.
Pagliari, L., Batts, D., & McFadden, C. (2009). Desired versus actual training for online instructors in community colleges. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 12(4). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ ojdla/winter124/pagliari124.html
The study revealed that there is a gap between actual outcomes and theoretical prediction of the outcomes. According to the inquiry, actual results depend on both students and college.
Paul, J. A., & Cochran, J. D. (2013). Key Interactions for Online Programs between Faculty, Students, Technologies, and Educational Institutions: A Holistic Framework. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 14(1), 49-57.
The study applied a qualitative research among the students and educators of several institutions. The results revealed that the close communication is required between the students and educators.
Schiffman, S. (2005). Business issues in online education. In J. Bourne & J. C. Moore (Eds.), Elements of quality education: Engaging communities. Needham, MA: Sloan Consortium.
The article provided in the book describes the business opportunities of the online education for the colleges. According to the research, online education is profitable for the colleges, yet the price for the courses has to be lower than the face-to-face education.
Williamson, T. W., Brooks, K., & Ross, L. L. (2015). The Current Conundrum of State Authorization for Online Education Programs and Clinical Placement. Journal of Allied Health, 44(3), 188-199.
The scholars evaluated the policies regarding the online education. It was revealed that the policies do not have precise instructions regarding the online courses.
Xu, D., & Jaggars, S. S. (2011). The effectiveness of distance education across Virginia’s community colleges: Evidence from introductory college-level math and English courses. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33(3), 360–377.
The researchers conducted a survey among the Virginia colleges. The research claimed that the students performed worse in online programs regarding course persistence and final results.
Xu D. & Jaggars, S. S. (2013). Examining the Effectiveness of Online Learning Within a Community College System: An Instrumental Variable Approach. (CCRC Working Paper No. 56 Assessment of Evidence Series). New York, NY: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
A follow-up research performed in Washington. The results detected that online format had a substantial negative effect on course persistence and course grade.
Yang, N., & Arjomand, L. H. (1999). Opportunities and Challenges in Computer-Mediated Business Education: An Exploratory Investigation of Online Programs. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 3(2), 17.
The scholars conducted a research evaluating the attitude of the enrollees in the community colleges. The results of this research implied that half of the students preferred to undergo at least half of their program face-to-face in order to get to know the professors better.
