Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011.

TLDR

Online education in the United States has expanded rapidly, with over six million students enrolled and a 358 % growth in enrollments since 2003, yet faculty acceptance of its legitimacy remains low at just 32 % and many leaders still view online learning outcomes as inferior to face‑to‑face instruction. Academic leaders at institutions offering online courses rate their learning outcomes more favorably, 65 % consider online learning critical to long‑term strategy, and for‑profit schools are most likely to include it in their plans, while overall faculty acceptance of online education and the value of open educational resources has remained relatively stable, with 57 % endorsing OERs and nearly two thirds believing they can reduce costs.

Abstract

There are now over six million students in the USA taking at least one online course 31 percent of all students in the USA (public, private and for-profit) are now taking at least one course online Since 2003, online enrollments have grown by 358 percent However, since 2003, the proportion of respondents who agree that their faculty ‘fully accept’ the ‘value and legitimacy of online education’ has edged up from 30.4 percent to just 32 percent One-third of all academic leaders continue to believe that the learning outcomes for online education are inferior to those of face-to-face instruction. Academic leaders at institutions with online offerings have a much more favorable opinion of the relative learning outcomes for online courses than do those at institutions with no online courses or programs. 65 percent of all reporting institutions said that online learning was a critical part of their long-term strategy, a small increase from 63 percent in 2010. For-profit institutions are the most likely to have included online learning as a part of their strategic plan While the number of programs and courses online continue to grow, the acceptance of this learning modality by faculty has been relatively constant since first measured in 2003 (according to chief academic officers) 57 percent of academic leaders believe that OERs have value and less than five percent disagree (the rest are neutral). The proportion of for-profit institutions agreeing with this statement has shown a large increase over a two-year period (moving from 49.8 percent in 2009 to 72.4 percent in 2011.) Nearly two thirds of chief academic officers agreed that OERs have the potential to reduce costs.