The State of Distance and Online Education
The popularity of online and distance education programs is attributed in part to the rise of the Network Society, which was catalyzed by advancement in information technology and the subsequent increase in the use of the Internet throughout the world. According to a recent report by the World Bank, more than 3.2 billion people around the world are active users of the internet (World Bank, 2017). Online and distance education is also an attractive pathway for working adults over the age of 25, who tend to bring unique strengths and challenges to the online learning ecology (Squires, 2018, p. 127). Another element to the prevalence of online education is that it offers Institutions of higher education an efficient and logistically-reasonable alternative to “traditional” face-to-face program offerings (Allen & Seaman, 2013; Steven & Elaine, 2008).
The emergence of online and distance education has created an andragogic and cultural rift within the ecology of higher education, concerning the quality and appropriateness of online curriculum (Bousbahi & Alrazgan, 2015). The rejection of online education as a legitimate environment for teaching and learning is due to both generational and philosophical differences (Allen & Seaman, 2013; Bousbahi & Alrazgan, 2015; Steven & Elaine, 2008). Faculty members who are accustomed to teaching in the traditional face-to-face settings are reluctant to engage in the development and implantation of new learning management systems (Bousbahi & Alrazgan, 2015). However, in a recent study, Allen and Seaman (2015) found that while the majority of faculty (78%) question the validity of online education, institutional leaders and cabinet-level members discuss and have plans for including online education in their strategic plans.
The recoiling stigma that is associated with online and distance education may also be attributed to the low course persistence, lack of student reediness for online courses, and high attrition rates as compared to traditional face-to-face modality (Hung, Chou, Chen & Own, 2010). Recent studies have shown that the dropout rates for students enrolled in online courses is 10-20% higher than those of traditional face-to-face programs (Allen & Seaman, 2013; Allen & Seaman, 2017; Hung et al., 2010; Online Learning Consortium, 2018). Another stigma that has been linked to online education is the real and perceived vulnerability of this modality to acts of plagiarism and other forms of violations to academic integrities (MacLennan, 2018; McAllister & Watkins, 2012).
However, recent studies have shown that plagiarism can be minimized by fostering self-regulated learning skills and reimagining the structures of course and program designs (McAllister & Watkins, 2012). Additionally, Tools like Safe Assign and Turnitin have shown to enhance the student’s ability to write academically and at the same time honor the institutional codes of ethics. For example, Halgamuge (2017) has found that the use of Turnitin has helped students improve their written communication skills and reduce their similarity indexes between the first and subsequent drafts. In a similar study, Tolman (2017) have examined the link between online courses and academic dishonesty and showed that it is a fallacy. He argued that the nature of online courses is less conducive to academic dishonesty than those in the face-to-face environments (p. 583).