When making choices about mode of delivery, teachers and instructors need to ask the following four questions:

• who are  – or could be – my students?
• what is my preferred teaching approach?
• what are the content and skills that I need to teach?
• what resources will I have to support my decision?

As always, start with the learners.

11.3.1 Fully online/distance learners

Research (see for instance Dabbagh, 2007) has repeatedly shown that fully online courses suit some types of student better than others:

• older, more mature students;
• students with already high levels of education;
• part-time students who are working and/or with families.

This applies not only to MOOCs (see Chapter 5) and other non-credit courses, but even more so to courses and programs for credit. There are in fact several different markets for online learning.

11.3.1.1 School/k-12 students

Some online and distance learning is now quite common in many jurisdictions for students in the last two years of high school. Such students may be in smaller schools that lack specialist teachers in science, for instance, or students who are unable to attend school for health or personal reasons.

The Ontario provincial government at one point wanted all high school students to take at least four high school credits out of 30 online (Laucius, 2019), but this was primarily an attempt to save money on teachers and was later reduced to two credits due to public resistance to the idea. Nevertheless there is a small but important group of k-12 students who will benefit from online and distance education.

11.3.1.1 Undergraduate online students

Today, ‘distance’ is more likely to be psychological or social, rather than geographical. For instance, from survey data regularly collected from students at the University of British Columbia (UBC):

• less than 20 per cent give reasons related to distance or travel for taking an online course;
• most of the more than 10,000 or so UBC students (there are over 60,000 students in total) taking at least one fully online course are not truly distant. The majority (over 80 per cent) live in the Greater Vancouver Metropolitan Area, within 90 minutes commute time to the university, and almost half within the relatively compact City of Vancouver. Comparatively few (less than 10 per cent) live outside the province (although this proportion is slowly growing each year);
• two thirds of UBC’s online students have paid work of one kind or another;
• many undergraduate students in their fourth year take an online course because the face-to-face classes are ‘capped’ because of their large size, or because they are short of the required number of credits to complete a degree. Taking a course online allows these students to complete their program without having to come back for another year;
• the main reason for most UBC students taking fully online courses is the flexibility they provide, given the work and family commitments of students and the difficulty caused by timetable conflicts for face-to-face classes.

In the USA, almost one in three undergraduate students is taking at least one online course (Allen and Seaman, 2017). At an undergraduate level, students are likely to take a maximum of three to four online courses as part of a regular campus-based degree program at universities and up to five online courses at two year colleges, in Canada (Donovan et al., 2018).

Until recently in North America, there were few undergraduate programs offered entirely online, except in specialist institutions such as the open universities in Canada (Athabasca, Téluq, Thompson Rivers Open Learning) and University of Phoenix, Western Governors University, and University of Maryland University College in the USA. However, in recent years a number of specialist online undergraduate programs have started to be offered, such as the Bachelor of Mining Engineering Technology for working miners at Queen’s University, Canada

This suggests that fully online courses are suitable for more experienced students with a strong motivation to take such courses because of the impact they have on their quality of life. In general, online students need more self-discipline in studying and a greater motivation to study to succeed. This does not mean that other kinds of students cannot benefit from online learning, but extra effort needs to go into the design and support of such students online.

11.3.1.2 Graduate online students

Although in the USA, the proportion of students taking distance education courses at a graduate level overall is almost the same (17 per cent) as those taking on-campus graduate courses – 15 per cent – the proportion of students taking distance education courses at a graduate level is much higher for private, not-for profit – 37 per cent, and for-profit institutions – 28 per cent (Allen and Seaman, 2017). (As in Canada – Donovan. et al., 2018 – distance education now is almost synonymous with fully online learning in the USA).

The most rapid area of growth in online courses is for masters programs aimed at working professionals. So far, apart from MBAs and teacher education, public universities tend to be relatively slow in recognising the importance of this market, which at worse could be self-financing, and at best could bring in much needed additional revenues. The for-profit universities, though, such as the University of Phoenix, Laureate University and Capella University, and especially some of the private, not-for-profit universities in the USA, have been quicker to move into this market.

11.3.1.3 Lifelong learners

Fully online courses really suit working professionals. In a digital age, the knowledge base is continually expanding, jobs change rapidly, and hence there is strong demand for on-going, continuing education, often in ‘niche’ areas of knowledge. Online learning is a convenient and effective way of providing such lifelong learning.

Lifelong learners are often working with families and really appreciate the flexibility of studying fully online. They often already have higher education qualifications such as a first degree, and therefore have learned how to study successfully. They may be engineers looking for training in management, or professionals wanting to keep up to date in their professional area. They are often better motivated, because they can see a direct link between the new course of study and possible improvement in their career prospects. They are therefore ideal students for online courses (even though they may be older and less tech savvy than students coming out of high school).

 Following the pandemic, in 2022 the School of Continuing Studies at Toronto Metropolitan (formerly Ryerson) University moved all its former on-campus courses online, following a survey of its students. (Most of its students had to commute into the centre of the city from the suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area for its face-to-face classes.)

In recent years, there has been growing interest in micro-credentials, short, online courses that cover a particular area of knowledge or competency, often linked to local employer demand (for more about micro-credentials, see Contact North, 2020). 

What is important for lifelong learners is that the courses are technically well designed, in that learners do not need to be highly skilled in using computers to be able to study the courses.

11.3.1.4 Remote learners

Often it is also assumed that isolated or remote learners are the main market for distance or fully online learners in that they are a long way away from any local school, college or university. Certainly in Canada, there are such students and the ability to study locally rather than travel great distances can be very appealing. However, in many remote rural areas, Internet access can be difficult, with either slow satellite connections or telephone-based, slow-speed modems. Remote learners will also struggle if there is no easily accessible or culturally appropriate local support for their studies.

Since the vast majority of online learners are urban, living within one hour’s travel of a college or university campus, it is the flexibility rather than the distance that matters to these learners.

11.3.1.5 Changing demographics

One other factor to consider is the impact of changing demographics. In the USA, overall higher education enrolments declined by 3 per cent between 2012-2015, while distance education enrolments increased by 4 per cent over the same period (Allen and Seaman, 2017).

In jurisdictions where the school-age population is starting to decline, expanding into lifelong learning markets may be essential for maintaining student enrolments. Although the rate of growth in distance education/online learning is not spectacular, it may eventually turn out to be a way to keep some academic departments alive.

11.3.1.6 New business models

However, to make lifelong learning online programs work, institutions need to make some important adjustments. In particular there must be incentives or rewards for faculty to move in this direction and there needs to be some strategic thinking about the best way to offer such programs.

The University of British Columbia has developed a series of very successful, fully online, self-financing professional masters’ programs. Students can initially try one or two courses in the Graduate Certificate in Rehabilitation before applying to the master’s program. The certificate can be completed in less than two years while working full-time, and paying per course rather than for a whole Master’s year, providing the flexibility needed by lifelong learners. UBC also partnered with Tec de Monterrey in Mexico, with the same program being offered in English by UBC and in Spanish by Tec de Monterrey, as a means of kick-starting its very successful Master in Educational Technology program, which, when it opened, doubled the number of graduate students in UBC’s Faculty of Education, and is still running now almost 20 years after its initial offering. We shall see these examples are important when we examine the development of modular programming in Section 12.5.2.

Online learning also offers the opportunity to offer programs where an institution has unique research expertise but insufficient local students to offer a full master’s program. By going fully online, perhaps in partnership with another university with similar expertise but in a different jurisdiction, it may be able to attract students from across the country or even internationally, enabling the research to be more widely disseminated and to build a cadre of professionals in newly emerging areas of knowledge – again an important goal in a digital age.

11.3.2 Blended learning learners

In terms of blended learning, the ‘market’ is less clearly defined than for fully online learning. The benefit for students is increased flexibility, but they will still need to be relatively local in order to attend the campus-based sessions. The main advantage is for the 50 per cent or more of students, at least in Canada, who are working more than 15 hours a week (Marshall, 2010) to help with the cost of their education and to keep their student debt as low as possible. Also, blended learning provides an opportunity for the gradual development of independent learning skills, as long as this is an intentional teaching strategy.

The research also suggests that these skills of independent learning need to be developed while students are on campus. In other words, online learning, in the form of blended learning, should be deliberately introduced and gradually increased as students work through a program, so by the time they graduate, they have the skills to continue to learn independently – a critical skill for the digital age. In general, it is not a good idea to offer fully online courses in the early years of a university or college career, unless they are exceptionally well designed with a considerable amount of online learner support – and hence are likely to be expensive to mount, if they are to be successful.

As well as the benefits of more flexibility for students, especially those working part-time, the academic benefits of blended learning are being better understood. These will be discussed in more detail in the next section. At this point, there is evidence that in Canada, at least, more and more institutions are seeing a move by instructors to blended or hybrid learning, providing the advantages of both online and face-to-face teaching (Donovan et al., 2018). This trend has been greatly accelerated during Covid-19, as more teachers and instructors gained experience in online learning.

11.3.3 Face-to-face learners

In schools, a clear lesson from emergency remote learning during the Covid pandemic is that the younger the student, the more important is in-person contact with a teacher and other students. This is an essential part of social and personal development for young children and cannot easily be substituted through online learning. Nevertheless, specially targeted use of computers or tablets under the direction and supervision of a teacher can still be useful for developing certain skills from an early age, such as digital literacy.

Many students coming straight from high school will be looking for social, sporting and cultural opportunities that a campus-based education provides. Also students lacking self-confidence or experience in studying are likely to prefer face-to-face teaching, providing that they can access it in a relatively personal way.

However, pedagogical or academic reasons for preference for face-to-face teaching by freshmen and women are less clear, particularly if students are faced with very large classes and relatively little contact with professors in the first year or so of their programs. In this respect, smaller, regional institutions, which generally have smaller classes and more face-to-face contact with instructors, have an advantage. Also, blended or flipped learning is increasingly being used for very large classes, with lectures available online, and smaller groups meeting face-to-face with an instructor or teaching assistants.

We shall see later in this chapter that blended and fully online learning offer the opportunity to re-think the whole campus experience so that better support is provided to on-campus learners in their early years in post-secondary education. More importantly, as more and more studying is done online, universities and colleges will be increasingly challenged to identify the unique pedagogical advantages of coming to campus, so that it will still be worthwhile for students to get on the bus to campus every morning.

11.3.4 Know your learners

It is therefore very important to know what kind of students you will be teaching. For some students, it will be better to enrol in a face-to-face class but be gradually introduced to online study within a familiar classroom environment. For other students, the only way they will take the course will be if it is available fully online. It is also possible to mix and match face-to-face and online learning for some students who want the campus experience, but also need a certain amount of flexibility in their studying. Going online may enable teachers or instructors to reach a wider market (critical for departments with low or declining enrolments) or to meet strong demand from working professionals. In reality, of course, there is likely to be a mix of different kinds of students with different needs in every course (hence the interest in HyFlex courses.) Nevertheless, it is critical to ask, especially when planning new courses or programs: who are (or could be) your students? What kind of course will work best for them?

We shall see that identifying the likely student market for a course or program is the strongest factor in deciding on mode of delivery.

References

Allen, I. and Seaman, J. (2017) Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017 Babson Survey Research Group/eLiterate/WCET

Dabbagh, N. (2007) The online learner: characteristics and pedagogical implications Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, Vol. 7, No.3

Donovan, T. et al. (2018) Tracking Online and Distance Education in Canadian Universities and Colleges: 2018 Halifax NS: Canadian Digital Learning Research Association

Laucius, J. (2019) Ontario is poised to require every high school student take four online courses. What does it mean? Ottawa Citizen, March 22

Marshall, K. (2010) Employment patterns of post-secondary students Perspectives on Labour and Income Ottawa ON: Statistics Canada, September