This week the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) released its Managing Online Education survey results that were previewed at the WCET13 conference in November. Despite all of the talk about the potential data-driven decision-making in higher education, it is remarkable how little we know.
Course Completion
Based on media coverage, the WCET survey results that are grabbing people’s attention:
- For institutions reporting both completion rates, the on-campus completion rate was better than the online rate by an average of less than 5 percent
- Institutions had trouble providing completion rates with 65 percent not being able to provide an on-campus rate and 55 percent not reporting an online rate
These factors were covered quite well at Inside Higher Ed:
Some respondents blamed the lack of data on course catalogs that don’t specify if a particular section of a course is online or not. Distance education providers have for years fought to eliminate the stigma of online courses’ implied lack of quality, and the shift toward an equal billing makes it difficult to distinguish between different forms of course delivery.