Students flock to Internet courses

The number of students who participate in online learning at colleges and universities nationwide has nearly doubled since 2003, according to one source on Internet learning.

Nearly 4 million students across the United States were enrolled in some type of Internet-based learning course last year, according to a report from the Sloan Consortium, an authoritative source of information about online higher education. That number jumped from almost 2 million online students in 2003, the report said.

The number of online students has grown about 25 percent each year since then, according to the Sloan report, which received responses from a pool of academic leaders in more than 2,200 U.S. colleges and universities. This drastic rate of growth includes an increase of 800,000 students taking online courses in 2005, the report said.

The report also stated that virtually all public higher education institutions, as well as a vast majority of private, for-profit institutions, now offer online classes. By contrast, only about half of all private, non-profit schools offer them. Students generally appear to be at least as satisfied with their online classes as they are with traditional classes, the report said.

Private institutions may become more involved with online presentations as the cost of implementing such a system decreases. Properly trained staff must also be hired to work with students online. These staff members must not only be able to understand the course content, but also highly trained in the use of computers and the Internet.

A growing number of physical universities, as well as newer online-only colleges, have begun to offer a select set of academic degree and certificate programs via the Internet at a wide range of levels and a wide range of disciplines, the report said. More than 96 percent of large institutions nationwide offer online courses, more than double that of smaller schools.