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Part four






FOR-PROFIT AND ONLINE UNIVERSITY PERSPECTIVES

T

he for-profit university has received enormous attention recently. There is much controversy about the emergence of for-profit universities, especially those that address online environments. The chapters in Part Four are written by high-level executives of three well-known for-profit universities: the University of Phoenix, Capella University, and Jones International University. They make interesting predictions as to where blended learning can play a significant role in for-profit higher education enterprises.

Brian Lindquist, dean of the College of Graduate Business and Management and associate vice president of academic affairs for the University of Phoenix (UoP), discusses three modes of learning that UoP provides students: traditional face-to-face, completely online, and blended. All of the courses at the UoP last for five weeks. Blended courses come in two flavors in order to meet the needs of local and more distant students. For the local option, learners attend a four-hour face-to-face session for the first and fifth weeks of class, while the middle weeks are completely online. For the distance option, the learners attend a two-hour face-to-face session at the beginning and a two-hour face-to-face session at the end, with weeks 1 to 4 being online (the introductory session is intended to be directly after the ending session of the previous term's course so as to require only one trip). The UoP has seen an approximate doubling of its enrollments in the blended option each year since its inception in 2000; however, this option still accounts for only about 4 percent of enrollments. Competency requirements are the same


The Handbook of Blended Learning

for classes taught in each of the modalities. Nevertheless, it is felt that the online portions advantage student reflective thinking, while the face-to-face portions ad­vantage student socialization and project presenting skills. In this chapter, Lmdquist also discusses the efforts that UoP undertakes to train faculty in the requisite skills to facilitate online and traditional teaching.

Chapter Seventeen describes Capella University's approach to online and blended learning. Michael Offerman and Christopher Tassava note that Capella provides completely online learning opportunities for adult learners. Students enrolled in doctoral and some master's programs at Capella have residency requirements, which are the extent of the face-to-face blending that occurs at this university. The residency requirements for graduate students at Capella fill a largely social role in facilitating community, selecting a mentor, and understanding expectations. Capella takes the opposite approach to traditional universities. Instead of asking how online might supplement face-to-face instruction, they begin with the assumption that most learning can take place online, and face-to-face becomes a supplement to the online learning experience. In effect, this chapter calls into question assumptions that the traditional model or a blended model that still has roots in a traditional delivery of instruction model is more effective than a completely online model for the independent adult learners who tend to choose, and hence need, Capella University.

In Chapter Eighteen, Pamela S. Pease, former president of Jones Interna­tional University (JIU), documents the birth and history of JIU and many of the decisions that helped this organization develop a completely virtual model of higher education. The virtual-only model of JIU is detailed and compared with models of other for-profit universities that blend face-to-face, site-based learning with online learning. Several issues and challenges faced by virtual-only institu­tions are discussed, such as quality versus cost, hybrid versus virtual, and nonprofit versus for-profit competition.


CHAPTER SIXTEEN


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