Community College Distance Learning

Community and junior colleges offer time-efficient training in a wide range of subjects and programs. Community colleges grant associate’s degrees, diplomas, or certificates rather than bachelor’s or master’s degrees. Students can expect to complete coursework in two years or less through full-time attendance, and the training they receive is practical, hands-on, and geared toward helping them enter the work force as well-trained job applicants who are knowledgeable about the latest methods, techniques, and equipment in their fields.

While universities and four-year colleges offer not only a well-rounded education but also dormitories and food services so that students who so desire can live on campus, two-year community colleges, junior colleges, and technical schools generally don’t offer students the opportunity to live on campus. In fact, nearly all community college students select their school not only because it offers the concentrated skills learning they require, but also because it is in close and convenient proximity to their homes.

Some community college students plan to finish the basics and then transfer to a four-year school to complete a bachelor’s degree. This is a smart plan, because the tuition for community colleges is generally less than for four-year school. Also, community college acceptance requirements are less stringent than those of most four-year institutions. There’s no question that the hundreds of community colleges throughout the United States serve their local populations by training them in skills and knowledge to help them succeed.

Historically, however, not everyone who might have benefited from a community college education was always able to manage it. People who lived too far from a school to commute to classes, those with full-time jobs that wouldn’t grant them release time in order to attend school, and parents of young children who couldn’t afford childcare or didn’t want to leave their kids for hours a day typically had to forgo advancing their careers through higher education.

Fortunately, distance learning has made higher learning far more accessible to students and is increasingly accepted in the workplace. Today, thousands of people are earning certificates, diplomas, and associate’s degrees through community college distance learning programs that deliver the same quality and depth of education as their face-to-face counterparts.

In fact, a 2011 survey completed by Digital Community Colleges Center for Digital Education found that a whopping 92% of respondent community colleges were serving their students with online, hybrid, and web-enhanced distance learning models; 72% of these schools are enhancing these offerings with distance academic tutoring and other services, as well.

Some distance learning classes and programs are offered as one option of a traditional school that also serves the student population with face-to-face and hybrid classes. Other programs are made available by virtual community colleges that were created solely to offer instruction to learners in the community, as well as those at a greater distance, using the internet, videos, and print materials.

The advent and development of the internet has resulted in an explosion of distance learning programs. Distance learning classes offered online give students nearly instantaneous access to materials, as well as to instructors; students who don’t understand something have the opportunity to receive clarification from a real instructor, even if the instruction isn’t given face-to-face. This mode of contact, called synchronous communication, was a problem with earlier distance learning methods when students had to send questions to instructors via mail and wait for a response. Synchronous communication works both ways with internet-based distance learning models. Not only are students able to directly query the instructor, the instructor is also able to contact one student or the entire class to ask questions or offer additional instruction.

Ongoing conversations are also made possible and available to all members of the virtual classroom through internet chats or discussion boards. Just as students in face-to-face classes learn from the questions other students ask, so, too, can students in distance learning classes who will never meet their classmates or their instructor. The dynamic energy of the face-to-face class may be replicated in distance learning classes via the internet.

Another advantage is that most distance learning courses use software programs that allow the instructor to make a range of types of materials available in one location. This may include Power Point slides, videos, blogs, interactive quizzes and tests, print materials, and more. An instructor can offer a document or email that contains a link to media outside the software program that might be of benefit to students. These software programs allow instructors to add materials as they become available over the course of a semester. This means classes are potentially far richer sources of information, more flexible, and easier to tailor to the ongoing needs of the students than traditional classes where the curriculum is largely contained within one or two textbooks.

Many people are surprised to learn that distance learning courses and programs offered by community colleges did not come into being solely as a result of the internet. In fact, community college distance learning programs have a history that spans 40 years. As a result of a research study completed in California, a virtual community college was created in the early 1970s that had no brick and mortar campus. Classes were conducted via televised programs, and students completed assignments on their own, submitting them through the mail.

Within a short period of time, new technology allowed a variation on these instructional methods, offering students the opportunity to “attend” class at their discretion. Rather than regularly scheduled instruction on television, students were supplied with videos that they watched as their work, family, and personal time allowed. This was a boon for students with full-time jobs, as well as those with young children. Attending community college became increasingly possible for a greater segment of the population. This approach to distance learning became more and more popular, and over the next 25 years, community colleges across the country have offered virtual classes in which students are responsible for working independently, but which also provide an instructor who is available to provide study guidance and materials and respond to student questions.

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