Leslie Dare

A new report on enrollment planning from UNC General Administration has some big implications for distance education. With enrollment at NC State projected at 40,517 students by the year 2017 (see slide #26), online learning figures significantly into the plan for serving these students (see slide #27). Student Affairs will have to continue to be creative in how we serve this particular student population. Important considerations will be:

1. Fee (and tuition) models (slated to change anyway to per-credit-hour); fees are what support many of our student services and developmental program offerings. The existing models prevent most of our online students from using these resources, though whether they want/need them is still being investigated.
2. Ensuring that our campus continues to mainstream these students (“we all go to NC State”) rather than considering them separate or different. The reality is that they are – to some degree – separate from our on-campus students, and possibly different demographically and in other ways. However, it is critical that we consider these differences only in how we serve them, not how we value them. It would be a mistake to marginalize these students just because they are not part of our on-campus student population. Those of us in Student Affairs recognize that “sense of connection” certainly has a role in persistence.
3. Division-wide infrastructures for developing and delivering online courses through our departments that teach (ROTC, Music and Physical Education).
4. Deliberate unit-level planning for developing curricula for online offerings that are part of overall curriculum planning.
5. Continually planning, implementing and assessing efforts to serve this population with our services and programs. (My colleague Carrie Zelna would remind me that assessing is really just part of the planning process. So true. But I still like mentioning it.)
6. Adjust our language to consider those who learn in the online environment. I, for one, believe in the model that identifies “distance education” as one method of delivery on the continuum of “distributed education.” We know from our own enrollment data that many of our so-called “distance learners” are actually local, and prefer the convenience of online learning. And, many of our on-campus students are taking “DE” courses in addition to on-campus offerings. We need to carefully consider how we refer to our students so as to a) ensure they have a sense of connection with the campus (see #2 above) and b) aid us in thinking about policies, procedures and planning so as to appropriate include these learners.