Book Report 4: Allen and Seaman, Survey Data on Blended Learning Adoption in Higher Education

Yes, I've been busy today.  The latest installment from Blended Learning: Research Perspectives examines survey data from Chief Academic Officers in US higher education between 2003 and 2005, to get a sense of the adoption of blended learning courses and programs.

Allen, I. Elaine, and Jeff Seaman. “Blending In: The Extent and Promise of Blended Education in the United States.  Blended Learning: Research Perspectives. Eds. Anthony G. Picciano and Charles D. Dziuban, eds. Needham, MA: Sloan-C, 2007. Print. 65-80

This is a tricky business, as blended courses aren't as easily recordable at the institutional level as fully online courses (because blended courses use regularly scheduled classrooms and meeting times, just like face-to-face classes, and unlike fully online classes).  This, coupled with the fact that the best of this data is coming up on 10 years old now, limits its utility.  We might surmise that blended learning penetration may have escalated in the following five years.  But perhaps not.  Hopefully Allen and Seaman are keeping this data collection going, and will give us an update soon.

Anyway, for what it's worth, comparative survey data on blended learning adoption after the jump.


Chap. 4: “Blending In: The Extent and Promise of Blended Education in the United States” – Allen, I. Elaine, and Jeff Seaman (65-80)

• This chapter is pulled from Allen and Seaman’s book Blending In: The Extent and Promise of Blended Education in the United States (2006). The Babson Survey Research group has compiled survey research data on the use of online education in US higher education; this study focuses on the use of blended education.

• The introduction reports that US higher education “has embraced online learning” (65) based on growing online enrollments (3.18 million in Fall 2005), and a growing number of academic leaders who believe both that “offering online courses is critical to their institution’s long-term strategy” and “the learning outcomes for online education are now equal to or superior to those for face-to-face instruction” (66).
• A problem faced by the researchers was the inability to get accurate data on blended learning use in courses – because blended courses are generally indistinguishable from regular face-to-face courses in institutional record-keeping (unlike online courses, which use no on-campus physical meeting space), academic leaders had no way to measure reliably how many students were taking blended courses.
• So, this study uses a survey instrument that focuses on “opinion issues and measuring the extent of blended course and program penetration” as reported by academic leaders (66).

What is Blended Learning? (66-68)

• Definitions of different types of courses, defined by the proportion of the content delivered online (67):

• Traditional – 0% use of online technology
• Web Facilitated – 1 to 29% (essentially face to face; e.g., use of a CMS to post course documents)
• Blended/Hybrid – 30 to 79% (“Substantial proportion of the content is delivered online, typically uses online discussions, and typically has some face-to-face meetings.”)
• Online – 80+% (“Typically have no face-to-face meetings.”)

• The same proportions are used when defining online and blended programs – e.g., “a program as a mix of fully online and face-to-face courses” or all blended courses (67)

Detailed Survey Findings (68-79)

• Who Offers Blended Courses? (68-72)

• Almost 55% of all institutions offer at least one blended course; 64% offer at least one online course. This statistic masks internal diversity of offerings, however.
• Fall 2004 course offerings stats: Undergrad, 88.5% FtF, 55.3% online, 45.9% blended; Graduate, 39.7% FtF, 25.9% online, 21.9% blended; Continuing Ed, 38.6% FtF, 21.7% online, 11.3% blended.
• Penetration rates: “[O]nline penetration rates are about 20% higher than blended penetration rates at the undergraduate level and about 13% higher at the graduate level. For Continuing Education courses, online penetration rates are almost double those from blended courses” (68).
• Public institutions lead in both online and blended courses: 79% of Publics have at least one blended course at the undergrad level, compared to 32% on Private nonprofits and 25% of Private for-profits (69).
• “The smaller the institution, the less likely it is to offer either blended or fully online courses. . . . [B]lended course offerings increase dramatically as institutional size increases” (70). Undergrads under 1500: 46.6% have an online class, 33.5% have a blended class; Undergrads 1500-2999: 68.3% have an online class, 57.6% have a blended class (70).
• Few schools have blended offerings but no online offerings; Specialized schools have the biggest proportion, followed by baccalaureate and masters programs (71). “If blended courses were a universal transition strategy for institutions moving their offerings from only face-to-face to face-to-face and online, the distribution of schools in this stage (having face-to-face and blended, but no online) should be similar to the distribution of those who have completed the transition. However, this is not the case; institutional offerings, and the path they take to get to those offerings, appear to be widely varied” (71).
• Differences by Carnegie Class: 74.8% of Doctoral/Research institutions have both online and blended courses, compared to 29.7% of Baccalaureate schools (71; 72, Table 4); twice as many Baccalaureates offer only blended compared to only online.

• What Percent of All Course Sections are Taught as Blended? (72-73)

• Due to problems with accurate recording, the actual numbers of blended courses may be higher than those reported for the study.
• The mean percentage of courses taught online went up each year from 2003 to 2005 (from 6.48% to 8.19% to 10.86%), while the mean percentage of blended courses went down each year from 2003 to 2005 (from 6.81% to 6.57% to 5.56%) (73)
• Large mid-size schools had the largest increase in percentage of blended courses
• By Carnegie Class, only Associates had an increase in blended course sections over the three year period.

• How Extensive are Blended Program Offerings? (73-75)

• A “blended program” includes everything from a program that combines some fully online courses and some fully face-to-face courses, to a program that fully blends all courses, to something in between – the threshold is providing between 30% to 79% of all course content online.
• Blended programs are fewer in number than fully online and fully face-to-face programs; 36% of schools provide at least one blended program
• Most institutions offering blended programs are Associates and Certificate programs; of private, non-profit Bachelors institutions, 20.7% offer online programs, and 19.5% offer blended programs.
• While the trend isn’t perfect, Bachelors programs tend to offer more blended programs the larger they are

• What Disciplines Offer Blended Programs? (75-76)

• Data on penetration rates show that “programs which institutions offer face-to-face are somewhat more likely to also be offered as a blended program than as an online program,” suggesting that moving from FtF to blended is easier than moving from FtF to online (76)
• “Public institutions have the most consistent penetration rates, with most disciplines falling in the 40% to 50% range except for Social Sciences and History (35%) and Liberal Arts and Sciences (60%). Provate, non-profit schools have consistently much lower penetration rates . . . with only one discipline area (Business) having a penetration rate . . . of less than 10% relative to Publics” (76).
• Overall figures for blended programs by discipline (75):

        Business, 47.9%
        Liberal Arts and Sciences, General Studies, Humanities, 47.8%
        Health Professions and Related Sciences, 43.5%
        Computer and Information Sciences, 41.5%
        Education, 36.5%
        Psychology, 27.1%

• Who Teaches Blended Courses? (76-78)

• Core faculty (as opposed to adjunct faculty) are the primary teachers of face-to-face (61.6%), online (64.7%), and blended courses (67.4%).
• “Somewhat surprising is that the largest schools (15000+ students) report the highest percent of core faculty teaching blended courses (78%) and the smallest schools (under 5000) report the smallest percent (56%)” (77).
• In all but Specialized institutions, the percentage of core faculty teaching blended courses is a bit higher than that teaching online courses – probably because, unlike online courses, “blended courses require at least part-time residence on-campus” (78).

• Do Blended Courses Hold More Promise than Fully Online? (78)

• Between 2003 and 2004, not much movement here; 55% “neutral” in 2004… likely due to rises in online course offerings but no real rises in blended course offerings.
• In schools that do blended but not online courses, 69% were more likely to agree; in schools that do only online courses, only 22% were more likely to agree.
• Smaller, private, non-profit Baccalaurate institutions has “slightly greater and stronger agreement” than other school sizes and types (78), but most of these schools are neutral (79)
• In all Carnegie Classes except Doctoral, between 2003 and 2004 agreement with the statement dropped.

Survey Support and Methodology (79-80)

• E-mail with link to a web survey sent to Chief Academic Officers in “all active, degree-granting institutions of higher education in the United States that are open to the Public” (79).

• Institutional descriptive data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) (79-80)

• Response rate of 31.9% (80)

• “[R]esponders and nonresponders were compared to create weights, if necessary” to ensure representative participation (80)