UA to go outside on online classes

Firms to help set up, run programs

Saturday, November 24, 2012

— University of Arkansas System campuses will soon rely on private, third-party companies to help them deliver online classes to larger numbers of students.

While many of the state’s colleges and universities already offer courses online, partnering with outside agencies will help them expand their online enrollment and design degree programs that attract students in high-need areas, UA System President Donald Bobbitt said.

In his former role as provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington, Bobbitt worked with Dallas-based Academic Partnerships to expand the university’s online enrollment from a few hundred students to about 5,000 in a few years.

“Rather than staffing up and trying to create a new marketing model, we just went out and looked for a firm that had that expertise and could take our programs and present them to individuals,” Bobbitt said.

The UA System is seeking proposals from online education companies to design a basic model that would allow any of its campuses to offer a degree online to an expanded audience.

Outside companies will help structure curriculum in shorter units, design online lesson plans and recruit students from around the country.

The plans come at a time when public funding for the state’s colleges and universities will be increasingly tied to factors such as the number of degrees they grant rather than the number of students they enroll.

Leaders in public higher education see online programs as their key strategy for competing with private, for-profit universities that entice working professionals and returning college students with convenience and pre-structured degree programs.

For-profit colleges “are making money hand over fist,” said Sandra Robertson, interim provost at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “I think it’s clear that this is what some students prefer.”

UALR PLAN

UALR has already started the process on its own.

Starting in January, the campus will work with Academic Partnerships — which also works with Arkansas State University-Jonesboro — to offer a master’s degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s in business administration online, according to a contract between UALR and the Texas company.

UALR will eventually add a program that allows registered nurses with two-year degrees to finish a full bachelor’s degree in nursing online, and it may expand the agreement to include other degree plans in the future, Robertson said.

“There’s a whole group of people out there who don’t have the option to go to school full time,” she said, explaining UALR’s desire to expand beyond traditional, on-campus offerings.

Unlike UALR’s existing online offerings, programs coordinated through Academic Partnerships will be delivered to cohorts — or groups of students who are all pursuing the same degree — in pre-designed “very prescribed” course plans centered on eight-week terms, rather than full semesters.

Academic Partnerships will recruit students who don’t fit the typical, fresh-out-of-high school mold by partnering with employers such as hospitals to offer degree programs en masse, Robertson said.

“We’ve sort of maxed out on what we can do ourselves,” she said. “Colleges and universities don't know how to market their programs.”

And because those courses will enroll larger groups, UALR plans to contract with another company to provide one “learning coach” for every 25 to 30 students, Robertson said. Those coaches, who will have a master’s degree in their subject area, may be in other states and might never set foot on the Little Rock campus, she said.

They will help deliver courses designed by the UALR faculty, track student progress and assist in completing assignments, Robertson said, comparing the coaches to more experienced versions of the graduate teaching assistants common in many oncampus courses.

Participation in the new online programs is voluntary for the faculty, Robertson said.

But the plan has sparked questions from some professors who are concerned that they will have to adjust to the new teaching model as more programs are offered through the partnership.

“People are just concerned,” said assistant speechpathology professor Laura Smith-Olinde, president of the faculty senate. “It’s a new model that we’re not used to. People want to know, in general, how is that going to work?”

Instructors have been concerned that expanding course sizes could diminish quality, she said, and some have questions about their rights to their intellectual property after they design an online course for the university.

Robertson said UALR professors will receive a $5,000 stipend to develop a new online course. That design will then belong to both the professor and the university, she said, which means that the professor can continue using the plan elsewhere if he leaves UALR and that the university can continue teaching it under a new instructor.

“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Robertson said. “You’re going to have some faculty who like it and some who don’t.”

Arkansas State University professors had similar concerns when the campus initially began expanding its online programs with Academic Partnerships in recent years.

They also were concerned that former ASU System President J. Leslie Wyatt had contracted ASU with Academic Partnerships while he was affiliated with the company. G. Daniel Howard, the interim chancellor of ASU at the time, also served on the company’s board, a position he later resigned.

Wyatt, scheduled to return to the classroom after he left his administrative role at ASU, took unpaid leave in 2010 to continue his work in online education and avoid a perceived conflict.

An employee who answered the phone last week at Academic Partnerships would not say whether Wyatt was still associated with the company.

FUNDING CHALLENGES

Bobbitt, the UA System president, said he understands and appreciates the concerns raised when public universities work closely with private companies.

“We already are engaging the private sector in things that we used to do inhouse,” he said. “I think this is an important and necessary relationship that will exist in most of higher education because resources are going to continue to be constrained.”

State higher-education funding has seen only slight increases in recent years, and an expected shortfall in state Medicaid funds will be a top priority in the 2013 legislative session, which starts in January, interim Arkansas Department of Higher Education Director Shane Broadway has said.

Growing enrollment combined with relatively stagnant funding mean some institutions are falling further behind in their funding needs.

Six universities and 14 community colleges would be funded at less than 75 percent of their need without a funding increase, according to a recommendation by the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board, with some receiving about half of the state funding they are entitled to under the state formula.

Bobbitt said UA campuses will not abandon “rigor, content or quality” when they design larger online courses.

“As long as it’s facultydriven, I have no concerns,” he said.

Under its contract, UALR will pay Academic Partnerships $153 per credit hour for each student enrolled in its master’s program in criminal justice and $90 per credit hour for each student in the bachelor’s program in business.

Students participating in the programs will pay the same tuition rates as on-campus students: $191 per credit hour for an in-state undergraduate student and $270 per credit hour for an in-state graduate student.

Other campuses will design their own structures if they agree to participate after viewing contract proposals, Bobbitt said.

Universities may choose to offer a few targeted degrees or professional certificates tailored to meet high-demand work-force needs, he said.

“Traditionally in higher education, we do a fabulous job of marketing our degree programs to 18-year-olds who leave high school and enter college as freshmen,” Bobbitt said. “But there’s a large group of individuals who want degrees who are not straight out of high school.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/24/2012