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Online Credit Options Expanded Across Cal State University Campuses

Anne Artley |
August 9, 2013 | 2:46 a.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

 

Cal State Long Beach, via Creative Commons
Cal State Long Beach, via Creative Commons
The California State University (CSU) system will start expanding online classes to students on other Cal State campuses beginning in the 2013-2014 school year.

The university system has offered online classes in previous year, but this will be the first time that they allow students to earn their credits online through different campuses.

The school administrators hope that this change may help students graduate on time by increasing the availability of classes that tend to fill up quickly, such as biology, statistics and business finance to students across the CSU system. 

The number of online classes will not change, only the way students can take them, according to Erik Fallis, a spokesman for California State University.

“We’re offering what we’ve already offered before, except it’s now across the CSU system,” Fallis clarified.

The online options now transcend city limits, as a student at Cal State Los Angeles can now earn a credit at a Cal State campus in San Francisco or San Diego.

Although the online courses do not take place in a traditional classroom, classes will be limited to 25 to 30 students, so that students can still receive individualized faculty feedback.

Fallis said part of the university’s aim in expanding the online system is to help students who are “limited" in their access to traditional education-—including students who serve in the military or hold full-time jobs—by accommodating their limited ability to come to campus. 

“Some things will fail,” admitted Fallis of the new initiative. “We’re still exploring how to offer a good quality product.”

California Governor Jerry Brown has been a longtime advocate of online classes as a way for the university system to cut costs, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Brown has budgeted $10 million to both Cal State Universities and the University of California to expand online educational opportunities in the coming year. 

Indeed, Brown’s goals reflect a national trend of growing online education. In the last school year (2012-2013) 16 major universities—including schools such as Stanford, Duke and the California Institute of Technology—partnered with the company Coursera to offer online courses.

Coursera, founded two years ago, offers free online courses taught by elite professors so “anyone around the world can learn without limits.”

As education becomes more accessible, however, some students wonder if the market value of a college degree will weaken. 

“It’s not fair that online courses have the same value as face-to-face interaction,” said Lannibeth Monjasas, 22, a Classics and Comparative Literature major at Cal State Long Beach. “[Online classes] are something I could just do on my own.”

Monjasas has never taken an online class and said she does not intend to do so in the future.

She also cited student dependency on computers as a drawback to online learning. “Any discussion is limited to a little window. If your Internet is slow, you’re not getting as much out of the class as someone else,” she said. “It’s not an even playing field.”

A national study echoes Monjosas's observation that online education does not quite close the achievement gap for low-income students in the way its supporters may have hoped.

According to the findings, statistics show that only 35% of households earning less than $25,000 have access to the Internet, as opposed to the 94% with a household income of more than $100,000, therefore the affluent are more likely to reap any benefits from widespread courses on the web.

Other Long Beach students have said that it is easier to procrastinate and fail to set goals without the structure of a traditional course or the guidance of a professor to keep the class on track.

“I had bad time management as it was,” said James Suazo, 23, an English Education major at Cal State Long Beach. “My online class screwed up my perception of when to get things done.”

Marzo said he ended up dropping the class in which he had enrolled.

Yet, students who work in addition to attending college said they are grateful for the flexibility.

“[Online classes are] convenient,” said Ussnee Ittimeykin, 20, a Long Beach Health-Science Major who also works in the campus bookstore. “Since this is a commuter school, a lot of people work and don’t have time to come to class. If I took up more time with my work, I would take a class online.”

In the coming years, it appears likely that universities will continue to improve the system of online education in order to reach a wider audience, minimize costs, and explore the vast potential of the college structure. 

Reach Staff Reporter Anne Artley here.



 

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