The report is a must read for faculty, administrators, technical staff, graduate students, anyone involved with distance education at any level - not just community colleges. Here's some of the key findings:
- Campuses reported an 11.3 percent increase for distance learning enrollments, while increases in overall campus enrollments averaged less than two percent -- 70 percent of the respondents stated student demand exceeds current distance learning course offerings.
- Many colleges have significantly increased their number of blended or hybrid and/or Web-enhanced or Web-assisted courses.
- Most colleges have rapidly expanded their student services and technology support services to meet accreditation expectations of “equivalency” with traditional face-to-face courses.
- Thirty-one percent of the campuses surveyed are considering switching from Blackboard/WebCT, which had seen a near monopoly in the past. The merger of Blackboard and WebCT has prompted a number of campuses to review their learning management system commitments.
- Administrators continue to identify finding and/or compensating adequate “support staff needed for training and technical assistance” as their greatest challenge. Workload issues are their greatest challenge related to faculty.
- Assessing student learning and performance in the distance education environment emerged as the greatest challenge for students in 2008.
A downloadable PDF of the 9 page report is linked here.
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