Online learning is thriving in the 16 member states of the Southern Regional
Education Board when compared with the rest of the nation, according to a
first-of-its-kind report by SREB, in partnership with the Sloan Consortium.
The number of students using online courses in colleges and universities is
higher on average for SREB states than for the nation. College officials in SREB
states consistently show more positive interest in online learning than their
counterparts do nationally, according to survey results in the first annual
report on online learning in the South, Growing by Degrees: Online Education
in the United States, 2005, Southern Edition.
The patterns of growth and acceptance of online education among the 16 SREB
states in this report are similar to those observed for the national sample,
with one clear difference: Online learning has made greater inroads in SREB
states than in the nation as a whole.
Some highlights from the report:
Sixty-eight percent of Southern schools offering undergraduate
face-to-face courses also offer undergraduate courses online, higher than
the 63 percent of those schools nationwide.
Among all Southern schools offering face-to-face master's degrees, 47
percent also offer master's degree programs online, higher than the 44
percent of those schools nationwide.
Among all Southern schools offering face-to-face business degrees, 48
percent also offer online business degrees, higher than the 43 percent of
those schools nationwide.
Sixty-two percent of schools in SREB states offer face-to-face
graduate-level courses also offer graduate courses online, compared with 65
percent nationwide.
Staffing for online courses in SREB states does not come at the expense of
core faculty, the report finds. Institutions in SREB states use about the same
mixture of core and adjunct faculty to staff their online courses as they do for
face-to-face courses. Instead of more adjunct faculty teaching online courses,
schools' use of core faculty to teach online courses is about the same as for
faculty members teaching face-to-face.
Seventy-two percent of higher education institutions in SREB states report
that they are using primarily core faculty to teach their online courses - the
same percentage that use primarily core faculty to teach face-to-face courses.
The figure of 72 percent for SREB states is higher than the 65 percent of higher
education institutions nationally that report using primarily core faculty to
teach online courses and the 62 percent of schools nationally that report they
use primarily core faculty to teach their face-to-face courses.
Seventy-nine percent of public colleges in SREB states report their online
courses are taught by core faculty, as opposed to 69 percent of their
face-to-face courses. Nationally, 74 percent of public colleges report their
online courses are taught by core faculty.
Higher education leaders in SREB states also suggest more schools are
considering online education as part of institutional, long-term planning, the
report shows. While there is some diversity in response to this question, there
is growth among all types of schools reporting such interest:
The overall rate of schools in SREB states identifying online education
as a critical long-term strategy grew from 52 percent in 2003 to 64 percent
in 2005.
The largest increase was in two-year colleges, where 78 percent agree
that it is part of their institution's long-term strategy, up from 62
percent.
Small schools, private nonprofit institutions and four-year colleges remain
the least likely to agree that online education is part of their long-term
strategies.
Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and based on responses from over
400 colleges and universities, this special report examines the nature and
extent of online learning among the 16 SREB states. For more information, view
the entire report, Growing by Degrees: Online Education in the United States,
2005, Southern Edition, online at
http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/southern05.asp.
For comparison data, read the Growing by Degrees national report on
online learning, released in November 2005 by the Sloan Consortium, on the Web
at
http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/index.asp. The Sloan Consortium
conducts an annual survey of online learning and has released yearly reports on
the surveys for the past three years. Research for the latest report was
conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, based at Babson College in Babson
Park, Massachusetts.
Policy experts in online learning and researchers who wrote the online
learning report are available to speak with journalists.
SREB, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta, Georgia,
advises state education leaders on ways to improve education. SREB was created
in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and
government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and
economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas,
Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North
Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West
Virginia. Each is represented by its governor and four gubernatorial appointees.
The Sloan Consortium, or Sloan-C, based at Babson College and Franklin W. Olin
College of Engineering, works to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of
their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that
education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for
anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. Created with
funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sloan-C encourages the
collaborative sharing of knowledge and effective practices to improve online
education in learning effectiveness, access, affordability for learners and
providers, and student and faculty satisfaction.
