Connecting with Online Education
By Michelle Rubin

As a member of the SOE's educational leadership program faculty, David Darnell does his teaching on the weekends, when his fully employed educational leadership students can make it to campus. Darnell, an assistant professor of education, often has students who drive a long way. "I've had students from Peoria, IL, and the Omaha/Council Bluffs area drive here to attend class."

Educational leadership students typically have to hurry and make it to campus by the start of classes at 5 p.m. on Fridays, then return home after classes end Saturday afternoon.

It is for students such as these that the SOE plans to create a "blended" educational leadership degree, which will "blend" online coursework with one or two face-to-face meetings per class.

While many SOE professors already are using online tools such as Blackboard, a software program that facilitates online education functions, in their classes, the school is preparing to take the next step and delve further into the world of online education by offering programs and courses to students who can't make it to campus.

Flexibility and access
U.S. News and World Report recently reported that enrollment in online education increased by almost 20 percent last year, and the most successful programs cater to professionals looking to further their education with programs that offer flexibility in scheduling.
"Not all online education is created equally," Darnell says. "Some of it is really good, and some of it is not. What we're trying to do is be thoughtful about how we can really do this well so it maintains the academic integrity of our program and gives that flexibility to our students."

"It's become very clear that online education in some form or another is here to stay," says SOE Dean Salina Shrofel, "and we want to offer the convenience for students to build their learning into their own busy professional schedules without having to contend with location. Online programs allow a great deal of flexibility for learners."

Shrofel adds that online education would allow the SOE to target graduate students in areas of the state that are not currently being served by flexible programs and attract more students to the school.

The SOE's future online offerings will also include some endorsement courses that will be taught completely online.

"It will make some endorsements available for people throughout the state who right now don't have easy access to them. It will be a way of helping teachers become better credentialed and more highly qualified," Shrofel says.

Changing the nature of education
The SOE has the technological infrastructure needed to offer such a program, and the faculty are experienced in using the technology. The online effort will be bolstered by the rich resources provided by the University's Cowles Library, which can be accessed by students off-campus.

Last year Cowles Library experienced an electronic overhaul that placed it on an elite level of computer library systems. The improvements have drastically expanded the research and academic resources available to library users by connecting Drake to several other colleges across the nation and allowing users to search all Drake library collections as well as topic-relevant scholarly Web sites, electronic journals and other off-campus library catalogs simultaneously.

"Cowles Library has built an electronic library that, for an institution of this size, is amazing," Shrofel says. "It's a valuable resource that will allow us to venture further into the realm of online education."

Though access to technology is not an issue, online education does require educators to re-think their approaches to teaching. And there is perhaps no better place for a discussion on the educational implications of technology than the SOE.

"Online education changes the nature of education," Darnell says. "It changes the role of the professor. We need to step back and think about how we organize instruction in a way that's meaningful for students so they can make the connections from course to course to course in terms of the program rather than just getting their hours done."

Getting connected
Part of that challenge will be to transfer the interpersonal relationships that are crucial to education from the physical classroom to the virtual classroom.

"The core of any effective administrator's work is effective relationships," Darnell says. "Those things occur over time through face-to-face conversations, meetings, group projects, and we're trying to figure out how to do that online. Some really rich conversations occur in class at about 9 o'clock on Friday nights. We don't know how that would go with online courses."

That's why the online programs will be based on a blended model of online and in-person sessions. "We value good teaching, and relationships with students are always in the forefront of our thinking," Shrofel says. "And that's best achieved using a blended model."

Another challenge inherent in offering education online is creating the same sense of community that exists among students who attend classes on campus. Drake and the School of Education have a tradition of creating a lifelong connection with graduates, and that connection is founded upon the shared experience of its students.

"If you've graduated from here, we really take pride in keeping in contact with you, building a connection with you that will last a lifetime," Shrofel says. "One of the challenges is going to be to do the same with our online student who may never spend time on campus. They won't have some of the shared experiences that bind other SOE students together. And we're discussing how we build that lifelong community online as we approach our challenges."

But as the SOE goes forward with its online plans, Shrofel says, "we are committed to offering programs and courses online that are the equivalent quality to what we do here at the School of Education, and we will be satisfied with nothing less." E

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