Perspectives: Developing Successful and Effective Online Courses

This week, Diverse Online is running a series of stories on technology and distance learning to complement the March 19 Technology edition.

Colleges and universities today are catering to the demand for distance learning options more than ever before. According to the Sloan Consortium, almost 3.9 million students took at least one online course during the 2007 fall/winter semester. Online learning continues to grow in appeal because of the convenience it affords students to complete coursework from just about anywhere via the Internet. It also has created an exciting environment that allows people from a broad geographic range and diverse cultural backgrounds to exchange ideas in a virtual classroom setting.

With tough economic times driving more students to higher education, distance learning can be expected to experience an increase in demand from this evolving student population. As an example, the total number of online DeVry University undergraduate and graduate course-takers in the November 2008 session increased 25.5 percent to 51,628 versus 41,128 in the same session a year ago.

As online enrollment increases, traditional onsite college professors are seeking more information about e-learning and what it takes to teach a successful online course. DeVry University and its Keller Graduate School of Management are at the forefront of online education, having offered online curriculum since 1995. Here is some advice our online faculty has to share for conducting successful online courses.