Click. Scroll. Click. Double-click. Assignment Completed. Computer screens are now blackboards; computer mice are the chalk. The old ways of teaching are becoming more outdated every year as colleges and universities are following the rapidly increasing trend of supplying online courses for their students. Wendy Rappa, the assistant registrar at UNH's Continuing Education and Summer Session, receives messages every day about online courses; she watches the number of enrollments increase. Students are scooping up their degrees across the country, and now more than ever many of their classes are being taught over the Internet. "I do not receive feedback on student satisfaction, which goes directly to the faculty and department chairs, but I can tell you we get multiple inquiries every day asking about online course offerings at UNH," said Rappa. The upward movement of students enrolling in these courses has been closely watched by the Sloan Consortium organization, which has been helping higher institutions become more acclimated to the online revolution and is dedicated to making the transition easier. The organization has compiled data, which shows the number of students at higher education institutions in the United States taking at least one online course has risen from 1.6 million in 2002 to 3.9 million in 2007. UNH, however, hasn't followed suit with the national numbers and has been offering only a small handful of online courses each semester for credit. "Unfortunately, the institution as a whole has not yet embraced the online delivery model," said Rappa. "There are financial, technical andphilosophical issues involved." The university has been discussing the possibility of adding more online educational opportunities to the current curriculum but Mark Rubinstein, the vice president for student and academic services, said there are still obstacles to overcome before serious expansion can take place. "Our ability to provide a quality educational experience through this medium is a primary concern," said Rubinstein. "But we would also need to understand and define how these courses would mesh with our current resident instruction, how we would provide support to faculty to develop online courses and… provide support for students who would take these courses, and how online courses would affect teaching loads for faculty. "At this point the discussions are preliminary, and it will take some time to bring to the table the appropriate participants for a comprehensive discussion, but my hope is that we can make some progress on the summer courses as a way to test both the demand and our ability to deliver sets of courses in this manner." The courses he spoke of have already seen some improvement, judging from this past summer when 237 students were enrolled in 15 different online classes, which varied in subjects from computer science to electrical engineering, mathematics, occupational therapy and business. This fall, the number of participating students increased to 620, despite UNH only offering seven courses in nursing, business and the graduate school. The credit values for each class vary from one to four credits, depending on course content. Matthew Macarty, a business professor at UNH, has taught an online course called Computer Essentials for Business, which is geared toward helping first-semester freshmen learn more about common software programs like Microsoft Word. Macarty has received mixed feedback about the course, but feels it still benefits the students. "The people who really like it like it because they get to set their own schedule, and so that they can progress at their own pace; they like not having the class meetings," said Macarty. "The people who don't like it have a variety of reasons. Usually they haven't done well, and the testing software isn't to their liking." Macarty's course doesn't implement studying in groups or virtual discussions, as many of the new courses do, and perhaps that's what's holding UNH back from expanding their online development. Granite State College (GSC), a member of the University System of New Hampshire like UNH, has been providing completely online courses since 1999, including 180 different classes this year and ranks 27th in the Online Education Database, a website that reviews and provides a guide for 86 different higher institutions that have numerous online courses. Professor Mike Russell has taught Strategic Management at GSC for six years and employs many of the different opportunities an online class can provide him. Along with typical readings and exams conducted via the Internet, Russell has his students compete in an online business simulation game and participate in virtual groups to answer discussion questions. As a result of his creativity and the simplicity of scheduling work around the other things in students' lives, his student feedback has been almost entirely positive. "The main feedback that I get is the convenience factor," said Russell. "Most of my students are working adults, and they don't live on a campus or near a place where they can access a class, so it's very convenient for them to be able to do their work at home." GSC has been successful with its online courses mainly because they compare closely with the traditional lecture-based courses that GSC also offers. Reta Chaffee, the director of educational technology at GSC, said 45 to 50 percent of the college's current students are in online courses. "As with any learning modality, some students do better online than in the classroom and vice versa," said Chaffee. "I think both classroom-based and online courses have their own merits... though the online courses are becoming more popular because of the flexibility they offer in scheduling one's classes. This is especially true for our adult learners who are balancing work, family and school." "I think both types have merit, but I think there will soon be more and more online courses," added Beth Benoit, a professor at GSC who has spent more than five of her 15 years teaching four different online courses including: Human Development, Social Psychology, Introduction to Psychology and Abnormal Psychology. While UNH lags behind Granite State in online advancement, they have had the UNH Professional Development and Training program in place for many years. The program partners with Cengage Learning and the University Learning Institute to provide self-paced, noncredit courses for anyone who wants to further their learning in a structured environment. "In both instances, our partners develop the online courses and form partnerships with several academic institutions across the country to provide these courses to the public," said Linda Conti, the marketing director of the program. "Over the past two years, approximately 300 individuals have taken these courses. These partnerships are ideal for us because it allows us to make these noncredit courses available to the public, which we would not be able to do on our own because of the administrative overhead and commitment that would be required." As the inclination to create more online courses continues, administrators at UNH will need to make a change and offer students the opportunity for new learning venues. After all, many students juggle part-time work with their classes and could certainly use the option of completing homework on their own, especially if the online courses hold the same value as the traditional sort. "[The students] get just as much out of the course online as they would in a class environment," Russell said, of his online business classes at GSC. "It takes an adjustment. They have to get used to it, but most of them think it works just as well, and it's more convenient."
Senior co-captain Bobby Butler sat down with TNH's Chantel McCabe to talk about his hockey days at UNH and his candidacy for the Hobey Baker award. Look for more hockey videos below!
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Oh my god the gorillaz are awesome, they are and always will be my favourite band! Rock on gorillaz
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Seeing as the title of the article is "University Professors protest during president's speech" it would have been nice to say something about the relative number of people outside the building protesting.
As I walked into the building for the speech, I estimated maybe 20-30 people outside protesting.
Even if I am off considerably in my estimation, this is still a far cry from the near-capacity crowd inside Johnson Theatre (capacity of over 600) to hear President Huddleston.
The faculty union tries to present itself as a unified voice of nearly all of the UNH faculty. The reality is that the recent decisions calling for Work To Rule and the Summer School Boycott have been made by barely two-dozen people. Unfortunately, AAUP-UNH does a remarkably poor job of reaching out to its membership and actually getting their opinions on issues, yet the faculty are legally forced to financially support the union regardless. -
The real skills in playing hockey are the skating, stick handling and shooting. The women's team must rely on those fundamental skills and not checking to play their games. To suggest that this makes their game inferior is just ignorant. The UNH women's hockey team is one of the best in the country and it is time for them to get the respect and recognition they deserve.
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That is not only an oversimplistic explanation of my personal beliefs of the American government and the Afghanistan War, but also an incorrect one. One of the purposes of government is to ensure the safety of its people. That is what the government is doing in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda can do nothing with American and NATO soldiers on the ground and Predator and Reaper drones in the sky, but should we leave before the Afghan government can secure the country on its own then we are giving the Taliban and al-Qaeda the opportunity to take Afghanistan back. That is an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and the safety of its citizens.
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At Anony. Mar 8- it's because the professors can't get a job at Stanford, along with the rest of the universities across California- the teachers there (public schools, colleges, universities...) are struggling to even keep their job or make more than they did as graduate students. Something tells me that UNH professors are hardly in that category, the only exception would perhaps be the adjunct faculty (are they even allowed into the AAUP?).
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