Breaking Educational Distance Tradition"An online education is a good way to see if a person can do it," said Stacy Thomas, distance education coordinator at Leeward Community College. "Students take courses this way for flexibility. They like to log on when they want, work independently and not have to be stuck to a traditional school." Distance MBA students have to choose a home campus from where a minimum of 15 credits must be earned. As a result, a consortium among the seven community colleges means a student can earn even more credits at other campuses. The beauty of it is that the college transcript does not indicate how credits were earned. "It just says they got credit," Thomas said. She said that while Leeward Community College is two classes shy of offering an associate in arts degree, as part of the consortium it can guarantee a degree can be achieved through online, cable television and interactive TV. "There is no stigma attached - ours is a tech-driven society," she said. "It's almost a plus to achieve a degree this way. It indicates you are technically proficient and adept at using the Internet and software and hardware applications." Bob Vega, a faculty-development specialist for online programs at Hawaii Pacific University, says the same is true at HPU. No differentiation is made between credits earned online or through the traditional classroom setting. HPU can boast of a global student body, but the Internet courses it offers also are the result of local demand. "A lot of working adults wanting to finish a college degree but who are unable to allend traditional day classes have opted for an online distance education format," Vega said. "Also, because HPU services a significant portion of the military market, a lot of these folks travel extensively and need to have a way to complete their study while overseas or at other duty stations on the mainland.' Vega said the trend in the post-secondary educational industry is the rapid growth of Web-based or Web-enhanced educational programs. "As long as a student has a computer and Internet access, they can complete their education online," he said. "In relation to geographics, online education is really an environment without boundaries." Access to education beyond the traditional bricks and mortar also is the answer to one of Hawaii's biggest challenges: staffing public school classrooms. "The bottom line is the [state Department of Education] hires a massive amount of teachers from the mainland whose length of stay is shorter than someone from Hawaii who trains here and stays here to work," said Paul McKimmy, director of outreach and technology at the University of Hawaii College of Education. "In the past, the old model of distance education was to recruit a group of students on Maui and fly a faculty member to teach the course. That would exclude other islands, and places such as Molokai and Lanai never got our services. The consequence was that we weren't able to offer programs on a regular and consistent basis." As a result, neighbor island students didn't know how to prepare for the few education courses that might be made available to them. They wouldn't even know when to take the pre-professional tests that would yield qualifying scores in time for the admissions department. And, much to the horror of fresh-faced graduates born and raised on Oahu, the only positions they could get would be on Lanai or Molokai. With all the new technology, geography is no longer a factor preventing people from achieving their goals. People who actually live on Lanai, Molokai or Kauai and want to teach there can earn their credentials and apply for positions in their own backyards. Through the College of Education, nearly 1,000 students have enrolled in distance-learning courses, with 125 completing licensing requirements and another 84 completing graduate degrees. |