According to a survey entitled Learning on Demand: Education in the United States, 2009, jointly published by the Babson Survey Research Group and the Sloan Consortium in January 2010, online education has grown substantially among students pursuing higher education.
The 2009 Sloan Survey is based on responses from over 2,500 colleges and universities. Online learning is defined as instances where 80%+ of the course content is provided online.
Here are some interesting stats on online learning as of Fall 2009:
Number of Students Learning Online
* Over 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term; a 17 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.
* The 17 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
* More than one in four college and university students now take at least one course online.
Economic Recession and Online Education
* Over one-half (54 percent) of institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for existing face-to-face courses.
* The economic impact has been greatest on demand for online courses, with 66 percent of institutions reporting increased demand for new courses and programs and 73 percent seeing increased demand for existing online courses and programs.
* The economic impact on institutional budgets has been mixed; 50 percent have seen their budgets decrease as a result, but 25 percent have experienced an increase.
Online Learning as Long-Term Strategy by Public Institutions v. Private Institutions
* Public institutions (74 percent) are more likely to believe that online is critical for their long-term strategy than either private for-profit (51 percent) or private nonprofit (50 percent) institutions.
Faculty Training for Teaching Online
* Only 19 percent of institutions with online offerings report that they have no training or mentoring programs for their teaching faculty.
* The most common training approaches for online faculty are internally run training courses (65 percent) and informal mentoring (59 percent).
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