Rural community colleges often expand their online course offerings in an ad hoc manner. Due to limited resources and competing priorities, the necessary, careful planning for online instruction is often forgotten.
Planning for Online Courses at Rural Community Colleges
Jay Leist, Jon TravisThe delivery of courses and even complete degree programs online has become commonplace in higher education. As institutions seek to extend their reach and students demand more convenient access to the college curriculum, online offerings have increased at an accelerating rate. What has not kept pace with this expansion of online offerings is the necessary corresponding development of planning to ensure that quality is incorporated with the increase in online delivery (Bathe, 2001). Although comparisons of online and face-to-face instruction have not shown a difference in quality (Allen and Seaman, 2006), a lack of planning for online instruction can reduce its effectiveness.This chapter examines the value of online instruction to rural community colleges, the importance of planning for these courses, and the actual planning that selected rural community colleges have undertaken. As this examination demonstrates, online course planning, as vital as it is to rural campuses, is often overlooked as colleges rush to jump on the fastmoving train of online instruction.
Online Courses and Rural Community Colleges: Benefi ts and ChallengesLike their urban and suburban counterparts, many rural community colleges have incorporated online courses into degree and certifi cate programs 2
Although needs assessment is a common and necessary element of faculty development programs, the process never seems to be as easy or as effective as we might like it to be. Sadly, the literature is relatively weak in this all‐important area of responsibility. Such a problem, no doubt, is due in part to the individual environment of each institution. Based on a presentation at the 1995 POD Conference, this article reviews a number of institutional approaches to gathering data from faculty, which may suggest some options for the reader.
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