Summary:
The value in Perry and Pilati article is its brief history of Online Education. Their history, which does not necessarily agree with others who have endeavored in similar summaries, adds some perspective about the creation of the Internet:
- 1969 The Department of Defense brings about the Internet
- 1989 Tim Berners-Lee of the European Organization for Nuclear Research conceived the World Wide Web.
- 1991 Berners-Lee and a colleague introduce the Web to the rest of the world.
- 1993 A group at the University of Illinois launched Mosaic, a graphical Web browser.
- Ninetenth century: Correspondance courses delievered via mail.
- Mid-Twentieth Century: Educational television used technology to deliver educational programming.
- Mid-1990s, over a million students are engaged in online learning courses.
- Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT)
- American Journal of Distance Education (www.ajde.com)
- Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (www.sloanconsortium.org
/publications/jaln_main) - Journal of Distance Education (www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde)
- Journal of Interactive Online Learning (www.ncolr.org/jiol/)
- Journal of Educators Online (www.thejeo.com)
- Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration (www.westga
.edu/~distance/ojdla/)
"One of the major barriers to online learning is finding faculty members willing to learn a new way of teaching. According to Allen and Seaman (2010), fewer than one-third of chief academic officers surveyed believe their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education, and this fraction actually has fallen in the past two years. It is highest (44 percent) among academic officers at two-year institutions and lowest (11 percent) among those at baccalaureate colleges. Unfortunately,
there are faculty members who opt to teach online but do not invest time in, or are not provided with, the pedagogical and technological training necessary to maximize the online experience for both teachers and students" (Perry & Pilati, 2011, p. 101).
"Stewart, Bachman, and Johnson (2010) found that nearly 70 percent of faculty members surveyed felt online degrees are not so prestigious as those earned in face-to-face settings, and almost 50 percent felt students receiving online degrees would not have the same workforce opportunities as students who complete traditional degrees. Such perceptions are major impediments to the expansion of online learning" (Perry & Pilati, 2011, p. 101).
