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Trends of Online Learning in Higher Education: How Online Learning Will Shape Higher Education
Online learning has been touted as a way to address some of the challenges higher education institutions face and extol as a tactic for staying competitive. Various external and internal forces have brought about the expansion and growth of online learning in higher education. External forces such as decreased state funding, tuition increases, technology costs and depressed economies have led to internal pressures to reduce costs and increase revenue in many higher education institutions. Combined, these stressors are influencing and changing the way faculty teach and students learn in higher education (Kuruvilla, Norton, Chalasani, & Gee, 2012). Academic leaders expect that online education will compensate for a decrease in traditional course offerings by saving costs and improving the effectiveness of learning (Allen, Seaman, Poulin, & Straut, 2016). However, in many universities, implementation and initiation of online education is still in experimental stages, such as combining the new ideas and advanced educational technologies of online education with existing methods (Huron Consulting Group, 2014). Therefore, identifying current trends and issues of online learning and shaping the future of online education is of importance to senior administrators as well as faculty members. This white paper examines recent trends and issues of online learning in U.S. higher education in the last five years through a review of literature and provides recommendations to guide academic leaders in making informed decisions about the future of online learning in their institutions.
