SEMO tries mix of online, classroom instruction to widen offerings

The college classroom model for the future is being showcased now at Southeast Missouri State University.

Southeast, working in collaboration with many of Missouri's 13 comprehensive universities, is expanding a pilot program of online and face-to-face instruction.

"It's a novel approach toward education, utilizing our new Internet technology in a way of increasing educational services to our students," said Southeast provost Ron Rosati. "We can offer more courses, more subject matter, and we're able to do it in cost-effective manner that works well for our students and the taxpayers of Missouri."

The pilot program launched last semester with one course, "Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages." The primary instructor taught the three-credit course online from the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. Part of the instruction, however, involved face-to-face time in classrooms at Southeast.

"We analyzed it and tweaked the process, and we are pleased with the results," Rosati said, noting that Southeast will offer seven courses through the blended instruction system in the fall semester. Included among course offerings are Chinese, German, French, an advanced physics course and some economics courses.

"We expect it to grow," he said.

The course in Chinese will be taught at Southeast, while most of the main instruction of the other courses will originate from the other campuses in the partnership, Rosati said.

The collaboration isn't a huge enrollment boost for Southeast. Rosati said as many as 40 students are expected to enroll in the expanded pilot courses. But it reaches an academic audience that may have been left out before.

"Some institutions may not have a faculty member to teach an upper-division physics course, for instance. Not everyone can offer it," Rosati said. "With declining budgets, it's harder and harder to teach those very small classes. Students will have exposure to more classes with our collaborative effort."

Partnering universities collect tuition for their students, who receive credit from their home campus. Rosati says no money changes hands between institutions.

The collaboration is an example of what's to come for the college classroom of the future.

The "Southeast in the Year 2020" campaign, led by a committee of university stakeholders, spent much of the last semester laying out ideas on technology, curriculum, student demographics, the role of faculty and the needs of students.

Rosati, an ex officio member of the committee, expects a final report could be completed as early as late fall.

"We're very excited about the initial feedback we're getting," he said. "We have a number of retreats planned for this summer to evaluate all of the ideas coming forward."

The review includes continual faculty assessments of the new online classes and summer programs being taught, Rosati said.

Course redesign -- distance learning and greater emphasis on technology -- will play a big part in the Southeast experience in the next decade. The standard 50-minute lecture three times a week could be replaced by a blend of online courses, small group discussions and traditional lectures.

"The goal is to increase student engagement, student learning and to manage information," Rosati said.

"There are a lot of changes going on in universities now with advances in technology," Bill Eddleman, chairman of Southeast's Department of Biology and chairman of the 2020 committee, said in the spring. "We want to be fully prepared for those changes, and how those changes will affect us."

While Rosati said the impact of technologies on faculty is something Southeast needs to be sensitive to, the university isn't looking at reducing its workforce.

"At Southeast we're in our fifth year of record enrollment, and the demands are growing considerably," he said. "Some of these new [teaching models] will relieve some of the pressures of growing enrollment."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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