Pew Studies Report Trends in Online Learning
A pair of spring 2011 studies just released from the Pew Research Center finds that college presidents are more likely than the public in general (51% to 29%) to believe that “online courses offer an equal value compared with courses taken in a classroom.” Other findings include:
- Twice as many people who graduated from college in the past decade have taken an online course compared to all college graduates (46% versus 23%).
- College presidents predicted that the number of students who take online courses will increase over the next decade, as will the prevalence of online textbooks.
- About a third of college presidents are on Facebook, and nearly half have used a tablet computer such as an iPad.
The information on the public came from a nationally representative sample of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older. The other study, which was conducted online, surveyed presidents of 1,055 two-year and four-year private, public, and for-profit colleges and universities. The second study was conducted in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
