>> Welcome to the HumanizED podcast with Michelle Pacansky-Brock. This podcast is brought to you by Teaching and Learning Innovations at California State University Channel Islands and is shared with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

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>> I started my career in higher education as a community college faculty member, and in 2003, I taught my first online class. At that time, many of my faculty peers were reluctant to teach online and administrators were reluctant to support it. I remember seeing their heads shake as they conversations about studies that were showing online classes had higher than average withdrawal and failure rates. These conversations played a role in creating a culture of comparison in higher education. That is, a culture that compares online classes to face-to-face classes. And this culture is still very much in play. Focusing entirely on comparing online classes to face-to-face classes is problematic. It situates online classes in an inferior position to face-to-face classes when, instead, we should be seeing them as opportunities to create unique types of learning experiences for different types of students. As I record this nearly 15 years later, many faculty are still reluctant about online classes, and it's usually because of the common perception that online learning is robotic and disconnected. And sadly, it can be, but it can also be transformative when it's done effectively. We know from research that faculty need to be supported and provided with opportunities to learn how to teach online effectively. It's easy to tell students to log in and instruct them to read a chapter, watch a lecture, and take a quiz each week, but that experience is not going to engage students at a distance and promote learning. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm ready to start considering the value of online classes from different angles. Recently, I learned about a large study from 2015 that generated new knowledge about online classes. And I think it may start to shift how faculty and administrators think about online classes. In reality, online classes give students a choice in how they take their classes, and choice is a powerful thing, especially to underserved student populations. I sat down with Karen Swan and Karen Vignare, two pioneers in the field of online education research. Karen Swan took me back a couple of decades and shared some history of the Alfred P. Sloan Anytime, Anyplace Learning Program, which played a significant role in funding online education projects at public universities. Here's what Karen Swan had to share about the role that access played in the early years of online learning.

>> I think that access is the reason for online courses, and, in fact, in the history of online education, when the Sloan Foundation first funded multiple attempts at online learning, their whole reason was access for underrepresented students.

>> Karen Vignare points out why the issue of access is of particular importance to the types of students public universities serve.

>> Sloan was very focused on mostly public universities, so we really thought this should be connected to our public universities, understanding that they were not reaching all the students they could, nor were they giving them enough options and choice. So I'm a big proponent of online learning as a choice for students because oftentimes our underrepresented students have very structured lives. Like, they have to work. They have to take care of parents, or whether it's their own children. And this access really is incredibly important to do it in a way that helps them make good choices. And what I mean by that is we didn't have to have all online programs for them, but we had to have enough choice that they could fit learning into their very structured lives, unlike our traditional students, who may also have to work, but many of them have the luxury of structuring their work around learning. And that's when they get the opportunity to come to campuses, et cetera. This is not true for those underserved students.

>> I was really interested in speaking with some students about the role that online classes play in their college experiences. I talked with Melissa Holt, a senior at CSU Channel Islands. Melissa grew up in a single-parent home in Watts, California, a two-square-mile neighborhood in Central Los Angeles with one of the highest population densities and highest percentage of families led by single parents in the city of LA. Melissa was a foster child who was adopted by her single foster mother, who Melissa refers to as her single greatest inspiration in life. Melissa's family is complicated. She grew up with a birth sister and a birth brother, who were also adopted by her mom, two adopted younger brothers, and three older biological siblings. After high school, despite what she referred to as some rough patches, Melissa earned her associate's degree at Bakersfield College and transferred to CSU Channel Islands, where she took a job as a desk assistant and started her upper-division course work in psychology. Today, Melissa is a resident assistant in the dorms at CI and supervises about 54 students. She's on track to be the first person in her family to graduate with a four-year degree. I asked Melissa about the role online classes have played in her college experiences.

>> I could never really get into online classes, actually. There wasn't that much availability at Bakersfield College, and here at CI, there's also not that many. The only one that I saw that's in my program is the healthy aging, and that's because it crossed with a bunch of other disciplines, but really hard to get into, apparently, so I'm hoping I'll get into that for the spring. My friend, who's a sociology major, wants to take it, and she's like, oh, yeah, the nursing majors take that one. The psych majors take that one. The soc majors take that one. So it's really competitive, and I guess you have to email the professor beforehand to get permission to even think about trying to add it.

>> I followed up with Melissa to find out what happened with that one online class she had her eyes set on. She did not get in. And as a result, Melissa ended up dropping her sociology minor because enrolling for an additional semester was not an option for her financially. I dug a little deeper. I asked Melissa if that same class had been offered on campus and she got in, would she have been able to complete her minor? Here's what she told me.

>> I think that's a good question. An online class is the same amount of work, but it's also a lot more flexibility. And definitely with the way that my schedule was looking, I had very packed days and I don't know that I would've been able to fit in another on-ground class. Also, my duties as an RA require me to have open availability at nighttime, so that kind of limits my choices also. Just, like, I have a lot of restrictions, [laughs] so it kind of makes it really difficult when I'm trying to figure out schedule planning and when there's limited options, like for this class. But when there's not enough seats and, like, that's the class that I could be using to help balance out things, then it makes it really difficult.

>> I asked Melissa if she had had access to more online classes, would it have helped her to complete her psychology degree within her desired time line?

>> Absolutely. And I've been talking to a couple of my friends, and they're taking online classes now, and they're finding it so much easier way to get through courses that they want in a way that fits with their lives as students.

>> Melissa's story really reinforces the points made by Karen Swan and Karen Vignare about how choice increases access to higher education for underrepresented students. In Melissa's case, she was able to persevere, and she'll soon walk across the stage in a cap and gown. But I sit here and wonder how many students don't end up in Melissa's spot and why there aren't more online courses available to our students. It seems to me that there is often more focus on developing fully online undergraduate programs at public four-year universities than a strategic focus on planning to improve the number of online courses. Here's what Karen Vignare says about this.

>> It's not that they need fully-online programs. Some of them would like it, but some of them still want that mix, and I think that's really critical to our thinking and planning.

>> Another important facet of this conversation is the changing student population in higher education. Many of us still think a typical college student is a person who attends college full time right after high school and lives on campus. But actually, that student now comprises only 15% of students in higher education in the United States. The other 85% of the student population is comprised of working parents, caregivers, veterans, and military personnel. Retaining college students has always been a sticking point, and, as our student population continues to evolve and become more diverse, the topic of retention is taking center stage at public institutions. This brings me back to the study that I mentioned earlier. This study, coauthored by Scott James, Karen Swan, and Cassandra Daston, examined over 600,000 records of students that took classes in three delivery modes: students who took only on-ground courses, students who took only online courses, and students who took some courses on ground and some online. Karen Swan summarizes the findings.

>> Progression can be slower for people who are only taking online courses, but for people who are taking some of their courses online and some of their courses on ground, they're more likely to be retained to a second year than students who are either taking all their courses online or taking all their courses on ground.

>> I also spoke with another student, Angelika Esser, also a student at CSU Channel Islands. Angelika is a grandmother of two who works full time and is also raising an eight year old. As you can imagine, her days are packed with activities. Angelika began her degree ten years ago and has taken two classes per semester since then. She's hoping to complete her bachelor's in liberal studies before her 40th high school reunion, which is right around the corner. I asked Angelika about whether she has taken online classes, and not only did she say yes, but she also told me that having access to online classes was so important that it was a factor that encouraged her to change her major.

>> I've taken several online classes. My career path was to take art history. Love art history. My absolute favorite. But it became a little bit harder to take the classes with working 40 hours, so I needed to change to liberal study to be able to take more online classes. So I changed my degree to liberal studies and then have taken several online classes because it's a lot easier to take when you have a child and you work 40 hours. Liberal studies allows you to take a very open curriculum. Liberal studies says you need to take certain courses in liberal studies, but then the rest can be from a wide variety of curriculum. So that allowed me to be able to finish my degree by doing online classes because when you take an, when you do art history, there's some online classes, but not everything is online. But with liberal studies, I have the ability to pick and choose different classes.

>> I asked Angelika what she'd like to see happen with online classes at her institution.

>> I would like to see more and more diverse classes. So every time when I go in to pick a class, I see the classes that I've already taken and I see one or two maybe new ones, but I'd like to see more.

>> Right now, faculty, staff, and administrators across the nation are seeking ways to support students to earn their four-year degrees in a more timely fashion. There's no singular solution to this problem, but I hope Melissa and Angelika's stories as well as the current research about online education are considered. If you do too, please share this episode with your networks. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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>> The intro and outro music in this episode is by Michael Burman [phonetic]. The musical score for this episode is by Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com. That's I-N-C-O-M-P-E-T-E-C-H .com. His song, "Inspired," is shared under the Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 License. Additional information about the HumanizED podcast and resources for this episode are available at HumanizED, spelled H-U-M-A-N-I-Z-E-D .csuci.edu. Join the conversation with the hashtag #humanizedci.