The popularity of online education has increased dramatically in the past decade. Most university has some form of online education. Although the reasons for instituting online programs vary, the studies relating to the perception of online education at the college level by both faculty and students have been minimal (Murdock & Williams, 2011). The Hot Chalk Education Index (2013), however, recently conducted a survey of students and faculty to ascertain their perceptions of online education as compared to traditional ground-based courses. The findings are interesting. 36 percent of faculty and 27 percent of students found there was no substantive difference between online and ground-based learning. 12 percent of instructors and 27 percent of students preferred online learning to traditional ground courses. 15 percent of faculty and 14 percent of students indicated they preferred ground-based education to online education. Although the findings of the survey may lack generalizability for reasons of scale, and the results did not indicate student or faculty demographics, the findings bring up some interesting points.

The plurality of both students and faculty indicated there were little or no differences between the two modalities of education relating to preferred modality. Given the nascent popularity of online education, the trend seems to indicate usage of online education will increase among both students and faculty. The most interesting finding of the survey might be students tended to favor online education over faculty, by nearly a two-to-one margin. Hence, crucial point from this finding can be students favor online education more than faculty.

This may be based on a perceived disconnect many faculty members hold about online education. Removing faculty from the lectern and forcing them to function in an emerging milieu unsurprisingly creates some resistance and negative feeling (Hawkins, Graham, & Barbour, 2012). The causation of this may be that current professors were educated in a traditional ground setting, in which the modality was professor-centric, and the professor had more control over the educational setting. For faculty new to the online realm, ascertaining their new position and how serve their students in this environment is a salient concern. Although some traditional teaching techniques are transferable from the ground-based classroom to the virtual classroom, others are not. My questions are: what are your best practices for operating in the online realm, what advice would you give professor use to the traditional classroom about the online realm, and how has your experience in the online classroom environment compared to a traditional ground-based setting?

Reference:

Hawkins, A., Graham, C. R., & Barbour, M. K. (2012). Everybody is their own island: teacher disconnection in a virtual school. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 2, 124-144.

Hot Chalk Educational Index. (2013). How do people around the world use educational technology, products, and online services? Retrieved from http://www.educationinamerica.com/research/hotchalk-edu-index/

Murdock, J. L., & Williams, A. M. (2011). Creating an online learning community: Is it possible? Innovation in Higher Education, 36, 305-315. doi:10.1007/s10755-011-9188-6