A Thousand Years in Thirty Virtual Days: Summer Online Courses and the Sophomore Survey
Introduction
Tempus fugit . Time flies. As a professor of literature, I have often found myself introducing this familiar theme to students new to the dead languages of Latin and poetry. From the comfortable vantage of an 80-minute class, I can begin with Andrew Marvel's familiar warning "To His Coy Mistress" without glancing at my watch: "But at my back I always hear / Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near." I understand, theoretically, the anxiety that "time's chariot" could evoke in Renaissance readers, but not until I became involved in the world of online learning — and more specifically summer online courses—did I feel the weight of its approach bearing down upon me.
The passage of time is also a recurring theme in research on distance education. Few of the standard handbooks have failed to notice the unique time commitments for teacher and student moving to online instruction from the traditional classroom. Most enumerate the benefits of continued thought and reflection afforded by asynchronous discussion, a medium defined by its position "out of time." Though online learning is typically described in terms of overcoming distance, much of its early promise draws on its ability—real or imagined—to free teachers and learners from the limits imposed by time as well.
However, many of these early studies and the teaching experience on which they have been based begin with certain assumptions about these online education. Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt, for example, spend the bulk of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace discussing courses taught to non-traditional students during the traditional long semester. They recount stories of highly motivated, articulate graduate students struggling with the subtleties of the emerging medium. In 1999, this focus was understandable, as these were the courses and students that fueled much of the growth in this area in the 90s, but as they acknowledge in their most recent study, The Virtual Student , the learners and contexts we find online today are far more varied. They cite a 2002 report from the National Center for Education Statistics which showed that "interest and enrollment in online courses spans all age groups," including 57% of "traditional undergraduates" (Palloff & Pratt, 2003, p. 3). Today the duration and design of the virtual semester is just as varied. While many colleges offer online terms following the 15-week or 8-week on-campus calendars, others offer staggered enrollment focused on content coverage rather than course duration. Most recently, traditional universities have become attracted to the promise of moving summer programs online, offering students alternatives to summer school on campus. Summer classes have long provided universities a way to increase four-year graduation rates as they guard tuition hours which might be lost to transfers. Yet in the rush to move summer offerings online, course designers and teachers need to guard against selling out the curriculum that is the heart of these new programs.
In 2002, Abilene Christian University, a comprehensive university of around 4,800, approved an online summer program focused on retaining residential students returning home for the summer. Major British Writers I, a survey of English literature, was identified as one of the most commonly transferred titles from state schools and community colleges, so the choice made sound fiscal sense. Since the summer online program represented a new institutional priority, the courses and their designers were provided an unusual level of support, guidance, and budget for development; however, the program's unique niche—summer online courses—was a relatively new concept with very little existing literature to help light the way. Our experience over the last two summers teaching multiple sections in two different tracks suggests that summer online teachers and designers benefit from the existing literature, but course designers of summer programs must consider the unique challenges of course duration and student population as they adapt to abbreviated online semesters.