GARY — The college experience has expanded online for a growing number of students, including more than one-third of the students at Indiana University Northwest.
Thirty-five percent of IUN's students enrolled in an online class during the fall semester; about 22 percent of students across the IU system did.
The number of courses on IUN's spring semester list of online classes tops 200, including some taught from other campuses as part of IU's Online Class Connect, through which some classes are offered systemwide.
At IUN, growth in online offerings is fueled by the needs of students, said Angela Velez-Solic, associate director and instructional design specialist at the campus's Center for Innovation and Scholarship in Teaching and Learning.
"It's about the type of student that we're serving and the need to offer more flexibility," she said.
A set class time can't compete with a conflicting family or work obligation, said Joseph Ferrandino, an associate professor who teaches in the criminal justice program in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
"We want them to finish (their degrees) in a good period of time, and we want them to have a quality education," Ferrandino said of students with shifting schedules.
Quiz- and test-taking online provide evidence of the nontraditional schedules many students keep. "Most students take quizzes between 1 and 3 in the morning," Ferrandino said of his classes.
The online format allows for a different approach to testing students and monitoring progress, Ferrandino said.
He allows students to take quizzes and tests as many times as they want, with a minimum standard that students must meet before progressing in the class.
One recent student took about 15 tries to get the required eight out of 10 on a quiz, Ferrandino recalled, but then took the quiz another 15 times because she wanted to get 10 out of 10.
Sometimes, he observed, "they will actually work harder" when presented that type of opportunity.
Ferrandino said the online system allows a teacher to create "banks of questions." The order the questions are presented is randomized, and each time a student takes a test or quiz, different questions are asked.
"You start thinking about it differently," Ferrandino said of teaching and evaluating students. Written assignments can be graded anonymously so a teacher doesn't bring in preconceptions based on prior work; group projects can be monitored to evaluate each student's contribution.
Student interaction — with one another and the teacher — is still important, and, in fact, required to meet federal financial aid guidelines.
But with computers, tablets and smartphones, that's become easier, Ferrandino said. Teachers can encourage students to ask questions of the whole class, for example, and give other students class credit for answering the questions.
"It's not just PowerPoints and turning in assignments," said Velez-Solic, who leads training sessions for IUN professors.
Ferrandino said Velez-Solic and the Center for Innovation and Scholarship in Teaching and Learning were instrumental in turning him, someone who initially "didn't want any part of it," into a convert to online teaching.
"They have a lot more power over how they receive the information, how they take the class," Ferrandino said of students in online classes. "It's empowering to them."
Online tools also help track students' acquisition of knowledge and skills, something universities need to document during accreditation and funding reviews.
There is "enormous pressure to show students are learning," Ferrandino said.
Velez-Solic said online offerings have been "dramatically ramped up" over the last year and a half, with about 150 offered by IUN, 54 of them in the Online Class Connect program allowing students from other campuses to attend.
"Very few classes would not work online," Ferrandino said. He said many of the tools of online courses are being incorporated into traditional classes.
"We're probably just at the beginning," Ferrandino said of the variety of ways the Internet and communication technologies will be used.