There is an article in this morning’s Inside Higer Ed entitled “Rise In Distance Enrollments” that talks about this trend in community colleges. Part of the article includes the results of a national survey taken by these institutions that describes the current status of student services for distance education at community colleges.
While we are a private, four-year university, it still seems that many of the results paralleled our situation here in Boston. For example the most pressing pressing challenge is how to assess student learning, certainly an ongoing quest. A surprising finding to me was that only 18% of faculty reported using the packages of course materials that are provided by publishers; 80% of colleges reported using their own materials.
While I have no quantitative data to cite, I imagine that our rate of using publisher-provided materials is higher, and if so, I wonder if it is because tenure track professors must show evidence of publishing, service, and teaching. One’s time in a four-year institution may be spread among more expectations and responsibilities.
i welcome comments on this, as I am just speculating.