A headline on page 11 of the May-June 2009 issue of CASE Currents caught my eye: Studying in Cyberspace: Will the growing numbers of online students become committed alumni? [Requires CASE membership and log in]. Good question – but the column doesn't address it. The co-authors (a professor and the advancement VP at Babson College) make some observations about the scale and growth of online learning in the United States, and provide a brief description of which institutions are embracing online courses and why.
The final four paragraphs are labeled Online Students as Alumni, but the main observation is hardly new: online learners' "potential as committed students and alumni is waiting to be tapped." The authors write that we need "to educate them as students about what alumni can contribute."
It is prudent to educate students about "what alumni can contribute," but many (perhaps most) students are more concerned about their own needs than they are about the school's. Students want to know how their relationship with the institution is going to benefit them.
As the article suggests, while online students do "demonstrate a high level of commitment to their education," this doesn't necessarily translate into a high level of commitment to the organization that delivered the courses. It seems likely to me that online and on-campus students alike will increasingly avoid the specialized course management software designed to meet instructors' and registrars' needs (in the same way that alumni ignore our so-called online communities).
Interaction with other learners, including information sharing, direct communication and socializing won't happen in course management sites. It will take place via the services that people are using already: blogs and microblogs, photo and video sharing sites, and online business networks. As Dan Guhr said in a comment about last week's posting, when it comes to school-guided interaction, "it seems relative value has declined because other sources for knowledge acquisition and networking have become available."
The Currents piece suggests that with the right data, "alumni leaders can...reinforce the bonds and community that we have built with our online students." But this takes for granted a more challenging piece of the puzzle: building "bonds and community" between the institution and the students in the first place – a job made all the more difficult with an audience of distance learners.
Connecting with people online is easy. Mattering to them is another problem altogether.
Can online degree programs provide something like the alumni cohesion, relevance and community that residential programs engender?
Do they need to?
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