UTArlington - The University of Texas at Arlington Magazine

World Class

With their quality, convenience, and breadth, UT Arlington’s award-winning online learning programs are attracting record numbers of students—from as far away as Japan and Kenya and as nearby as campus residence halls.

Leslie “Tin­kie” Williams’ first visit to UT Arling­ton was the day she walked across the Texas Hall stage at com­mence­ment. Like a grow­ing num­ber of stu­dents, the Tyler nurse earned her degree at her lap­top, tak­ing advan­tage of the University’s dis­tance edu­ca­tion offerings.

These online pro­grams let indi­vid­u­als com­plete a course or fin­ish a degree at their con­ve­nience, with­out fam­ily or work con­flicts or the has­sle of find­ing a park­ing space. About 300 UT Arling­ton instruc­tors teach 700 dif­fer­ent classes—from core courses to degree and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion programs—to stu­dents who may live halfway around the world or quite pos­si­bly across the street. In spring 2011 nearly 6,000 stu­dents had fully online schedules.

UT Arling­ton dis­tance edu­ca­tion offer­ings enrolled a record 22,443 in fall 2010, a boom from the 5,072 enroll­ments in fall 2009. Accord­ing to the 2010 Sloan Sur­vey of Online Learn­ing, almost 5.6 mil­lion U.S. stu­dents took at least one online course in fall 2009, about a mil­lion more than fall 2008.

FROM RADICAL TO RANKED

Cor­re­spon­dence courses offered by indi­vid­ual teach­ers started as early as 1728. The Chau­tauqua Cor­re­spon­dence Insti­tute in New York opened for classes in 1883. Today’s pro­grams rely on tech­nol­ogy instead of the mail car­rier. In 1997—when the Inter­net was young and deliv­ery options were limited—UT Arlington’s new Cen­ter for Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion launched its first class, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence 2311, taught by Michael Moore, then a polit­i­cal sci­ence assis­tant professor.

“We said early on that we would have classes via the Web,” says aca­d­e­mic affairs Assis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent Pete Smith, who over­sees the Cen­ter for Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion. “In 1997 that was radical.”

Since then, UT Arling­ton has remained at the fore­front, with pro­grams gar­ner­ing acco­lades such as Best in Nation from U.S. News & World Report and pro­fes­sors receiv­ing four con­sec­u­tive U.S. Dis­tance Learn­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (USDLA) awards for qual­ity, the only insti­tu­tion so honored.

As a leader in the UT Sys­tem, the state, and the nation, the Uni­ver­sity con­tin­ues defin­ing and refin­ing dis­tance edu­ca­tion. This year Pres­i­dent James D. Span­iolo was named to the UT System’s new Task Force on Blended and Online Learn­ing, and he and Dr. Smith have served on the Asso­ci­a­tion of Pub­lic and Land-grant Universities/Sloan National Com­mis­sion on Dis­tance Education.

“We are com­mit­ted to improv­ing the qual­ity of our aca­d­e­mic pro­grams, both in tra­di­tional class­room set­tings and through an array of online courses designed to deliver edu­ca­tion where peo­ple live and work,” Span­iolo says.

NEAR AND FAR

Dis­tance learn­ers include stu­dents who can’t attend a class because of work, pro­fes­sion­als want­ing to advance their careers, sol­diers over­seas, and inter­na­tional stu­dents who may want to lis­ten to a lec­ture two or three times. Online courses are great for the at-home mom or dad, a trav­el­ing busi­ness exec­u­tive, a busy nurse or teacher, a high school senior seek­ing dual credit, or one of the esti­mated 3.5 mil­lion Tex­ans who didn’t fin­ish col­lege as a young adult.

The courses were ideal for Scott Cun­ning­ham and Karen Elliott, who put the dis­tance in dis­tance education.

Cun­ning­ham lived in Dal­las in 2005 when he started tak­ing grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion courses. The Niger­ian native had a bachelor’s degree in Eng­lish from Texas A&M and chose UT Arlington’s pro­gram for its afford­abil­ity and acces­si­bil­ity. Per­sonal busi­ness took him to Bolivia, where he com­pleted a sec­ondary cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram through the Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion and Health Professions.

“I chose the dis­tance ed pro­gram because I wanted to be over­seas and teach­ing as soon as pos­si­ble,” the 29-year-old says. “Flex­i­bil­ity is def­i­nitely a pos­i­tive, prob­a­bly the biggest one in my mind. You aren’t tied down by geog­ra­phy or a class schedule.”

Cun­ning­ham says he loves teach­ing Eng­lish at High­lands Inter­na­tional School in La Paz, Bolivia, and plans to fin­ish a master’s degree in edu­ca­tional lead­er­ship online in the future.

Elliott wanted for­mal instruc­tion in teach­ing after 10 years with the Florida-based Rafiki Foun­da­tion, a non­profit min­istry with orphan­ages and voca­tional train­ing cen­ters in 10 African coun­tries, includ­ing Kenya, Zam­bia, and Tan­za­nia. As direc­tor of Africa oper­a­tions, she over­sees schools and res­i­den­tial centers.

“I wanted some­thing more than an admin­is­tra­tive degree in edu­ca­tion,” says Elliott, who com­pleted a Mas­ter of Edu­ca­tion degree in cur­ricu­lum and lit­er­acy stud­ies in May. “I really wanted to learn how stu­dents at ele­men­tary and sec­ondary lev­els learn. I wanted to focus on lit­er­acy, so this pro­gram fit the bill.

“I travel a lot—three times a year to Africa for two to three weeks at a time—so I needed a pro­gram that would let me work on the degree from a distance.”

Closer to cam­pus, in Tyler, Texas, Tin­kie Williams put her plans for a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Nurs­ing on hold in the mid-1990s when she had a daugh­ter and her mother was sick.

“It was one thing after another, then I started a busi­ness,” she says. “I turned around and 10 more years had passed. So finally I said, ‘I have to do this.’ ”

Her sis­ter, Liz Good­man, also a reg­is­tered nurse, told Williams about the online RN-to-BSN pro­gram offered by UT Arlington’s Col­lege of Nurs­ing and chal­lenged her to enroll. The sis­ters signed up but were in dif­fer­ent cohorts, or stu­dent groups.

“My daugh­ter was in eighth grade when I started, and I grad­u­ated in the mid­dle of her ninth-grade year. I helped her with biol­ogy, and she helped me with alge­bra,” Williams recalls. “Many nights I was work­ing all night long in my paja­mas. I do bet­ter when work­ing independently.”

The hard work paid off, with Williams grad­u­at­ing summa cum laude in Decem­ber 2010. Good­man grad­u­ated in May.

On-campus stu­dents like pub­lic rela­tions sopho­more Zack Minter also ben­e­fit from online classes. He took micro­eco­nom­ics from Pro­fes­sor Ryan Amacher in spring 2011.

“I had four reg­u­lar classes and didn’t want to be in a class­room more than that,” says Minter, who is a res­i­dent assis­tant at Pecan Place Apart­ments and works at the New Stu­dent Wel­come Cen­ter. “With work, I would be busy from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. This way I could study at my leisure and dur­ing the weekends.”

He praised Dr. Amacher for send­ing fre­quent emails to stu­dents, often sug­gest­ing a sched­ule for com­plet­ing assign­ments. Minter plans to take more online classes to reach his goal of grad­u­at­ing in May 2013.

PERSONAL TOUCH

Tech­nol­ogy plays a role, but it’s the instruc­tors who define dis­tance programs.

“One thing that sets UT Arling­ton apart is that we have invested very heav­ily in our Cen­ter for Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion,” says Dr. Moore, now senior vice provost and dean of under­grad­u­ate stud­ies and the recip­i­ent of a 2010 USDLA Gold Best Prac­tices Award of Excel­lence. “Stu­dent sup­port spe­cial­ists and instruc­tional design­ers work with the fac­ulty to cre­ate high-quality courses that are inno­v­a­tive and make the best use of technology.

“The fac­ulty who are engaged in this are some of our best instruc­tors. We’ve really relied on some of our best tenured and tenure-track faculty.”

One of those is Nancy Had­away, direc­tor of the lit­er­acy and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion pro­grams for the Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion and Health Pro­fes­sions and a mem­ber of UT Arlington’s Acad­emy of Dis­tin­guished Teach­ers. She taught her first online class in 1999.

“When I went into it, it didn’t reg­is­ter with me that I wouldn’t be face to face. It took some get­ting used to,” says Dr. Had­away, who now teaches only online courses. “When you reach out to stu­dents, you can have a voice so they can see you as a person.”

Elliott took sev­eral of Hadaway’s courses.

“She was great to work with,” Elliott says. “She was very acces­si­ble and respon­sive to any ques­tion I had. I wish I could come for grad­u­a­tion; I’d love to meet her face to face.”

Had­away learns from her stu­dents as well.

“I have stu­dents in Japan, Saudi Ara­bia, and Ger­many, as well as mil­i­tary spouses and peo­ple in Amer­i­can schools over­seas and the United States. Classes fea­ture very rich give-and-take discussions.”

Enroll­ment in the Col­lege of Nurs­ing and the Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion and Health Pro­fes­sions has increased dra­mat­i­cally in recent years due, in part, to agree­ments with Aca­d­e­mic Part­ner­ships, a Dallas-based com­pany that pro­vides mar­ket­ing sup­port and other e-learning ser­vices for select UT Arling­ton programs.

About 5,000 stu­dents have taken Moore’s polit­i­cal sci­ence class in the past 15 years, and he enjoys when a for­mer online stu­dent rec­og­nizes him and says hello. On the tech­nol­ogy front, he says online teach­ing is much bet­ter than that first class in 1997 when time-consuming, edited videos of class­room lec­tures were the norm.

Now instruc­tors can choose from var­i­ous for­mats that meet their needs and those of their stu­dents. Black­board is a learn­ing man­age­ment sys­tem that allows fac­ulty to teach and stu­dents to learn online, incor­po­rat­ing such fea­tures as online pre­sen­ta­tions, dis­cus­sion areas, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tools. Blogs, dis­cus­sion boards, and Skype ses­sions are other com­mon avenues.

A class can be taught using only text, or with live video of the pro­fes­sor, or through a vir­tual hands-on world. The Col­lege of Nurs­ing uses Sec­ond Life—an online 3-D vir­tual world—to re-create med­ical scenes and scenarios.

With these new class­rooms come changes in teach­ing styles, but the basic com­po­nents of a polit­i­cal sci­ence, fresh­man Eng­lish, or grad­u­ate busi­ness course remain the same.

“Even though it’s not a phys­i­cal class that meets, you have to make time for it. Class will go on whether you’re there or not,” says Stacey McK­endry, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in edu­ca­tional lead­er­ship and pol­icy stud­ies and a res­i­dent assis­tant in Arling­ton Hall.

Uni­ver­sity ser­vices are an inte­gral part of learn­ing, Smith says. The library, advis­ing, and Career Cen­ter are among the pro­grams avail­able to online stu­dents. Williams ordered books online through the UT Arling­ton Book­store and used inter­li­brary loans. Stu­dents who take the 74 online Eng­lish classes—mostly fresh­man and sopho­more level—each year have access to the Writ­ing Center’s ser­vices and can call, email, or par­tic­i­pate in Skype ses­sions with cen­ter personnel.

VIRTUAL GRADUATION

Williams arrived for her grad­u­a­tion last Decem­ber not sure if she’d meet her online cohorts.

“We were all there at 6 p.m. and we went in at 7, try­ing to get in order,” she recalls. “They put us in alpha­bet­i­cal order and you could start telling who was who. I saw a few walk across the stage.

“The cama­raderie and pride from all the work, the cap and gown, the call­ing of your name. These are the moments when the hard work pays off. It was so intense for so long. It was kind of surreal.”

Her diploma looks the same as those for stu­dents who attend classes in brick and mor­tar build­ings. A UT Arling­ton degree rep­re­sents qual­ity, whether earned online or in person.

“It won’t be long,” Smith says, “before we have a vir­tual grad­u­a­tion for those who can’t attend.”

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