Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education
May 21st, 2012
Ithaka S+R recently published a report funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and titled, “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education.” I have written extensively on this blog about the economic constraints facing institutions of higher education, issues of student persistence and retention, and the litany of other issues daunting the American higher education system today. In their report, the authors explore many of these same topics explaining why they believe online education could be a boon for higher education in general and students, faculty, and individual institutions specifically.
Though the authors state in the Introduction that, “We believe such [online] systems have the potential to improve faculty productivity and lower instructional costs without sacrificing educational quality,” online education continues to face staunch critics. Fundamentally, the report notes that the onslaught of online education in the higher education landscape has the potential to completely transform our concept of and basic approach to educating the nation’s college students. The concept of online education is so foreign to many that there is some resistance based solely on it being “different.” The authors conducted interviews with a variety of institutions utilizing online education in a variety of ways. Not surprisingly, considering the relatively recent arrival of online education on the higher educational scene, institutions are still working to figure out how best to utilize new technologies to reduce instructional costs, improve student learning outcomes, and maximize faculty effectiveness.
Online education is becoming such a disruptive force (to use Clayton Christensen’s terminology) in education that the authors state, “Online learning is taking place at just about every college and university in the nation.” In their interviews with administrators and faculty at institutions implementing online education in some way, there were some common themes uncovered discussing the rationale for the introduction of online education. Many institutions, for example, see online offerings as a revenue generator. Online education has the ability to reach non-traditional students (adult learners who are not able to attend class in a physical, more traditional setting) as well as students who would otherwise not enroll with the university due to geographic location. While there are significant startup costs associated with implementing an online environment, many schools anticipate eventually recouping that initial investment through decreased use of facility space, increased enrollments thanks to the online offerings, and more effective use of faculty time. Interestingly, some universities have seen cost savings as well as increased revenue yet the authors point out, “Very few institutions are using either the savings from online education or the net incremental revenue to reduce the price of education to students.”
