Convenience of Online Education Attracts Midcareer Students

After Kate Whitteker, a supervisor and trainer at a research-services company, was laid off in 1998,

she decided it was time to create not only her own job, but also her own nonprofit organization.

As her ambitions for her nonprofit organization grew, she decided she needed additional training. In 2000, she enrolled in a program to earn a master’s in human services, and last month she received another master’s, focusing on the management of nonprofit organizations.

Now she is working on her Ph.D. And she has never had to leave the comfort of her home in Amma, W. Va.

Ms. Whitteker, with five children at home and no nonprofit-degree programs within commuting distance, decided to complete her education online. She chose Capella University, a for-profit adult-education company in Minneapolis that is accredited by the same organization that accredits Big Ten universities.

Ms. Whitteker’s charity, called Aid for Families in Need, provides food and clothing to the homeless from a donated mobile home stationed in Ms. Whitteker’s backyard. But she hopes to build a separate facility to help homeless people throughout the state.

“I don’t need a Ph.D. to be a director of a food pantry,” she says, “but I do think I need a Ph.D. to be the executive director of a large shelter that’s going to be a multicounty, multifaceted, and multiservice organization.”

Ms. Whitteker says her education would not have been possible if not for online learning. Because she puts in about 80 hours a week at her charity, going to a traditional school would have been “absolutely too difficult,” she says. “I couldn’t have done it. As it is now, I do my homework at midnight.”

Wide Variety of Courses

As more and more types of educational courses are available online, so too are nonprofit-management courses. Traditional colleges are offering nonprofit courses online, as are online-only companies such as Capella. In addition, institutions that offer master’s of business administration, public administration, and human-services degrees have online programs, and in many cases, they give students the opportunity to concentrate in nonprofit studies. In addition to degree programs, online courses are also available to nonprofit professionals who want certificates on topics such as fund raising, managing volunteers, or handling human resources.

Ralph Field, director of the not-for-profit management track of the master’s in science degree program at the University of Maryland University College, estimates that about 260 nonprofit courses are available online.

Convenience Attracts Students

Since most students in nonprofit programs are midcareer, the convenience of an online education attracts those who have family obligations or must work full time while earning their master’s. Like Ms. Whitteker, many online students say their number-one priority when it came to selecting a program was convenience.

“I don’t have to get dressed, go to campus, find parking, pay athletic fees that I never use, sit in a classroom, and then travel home,” Ms. Whitteker explains. “I can do my homework even if there’s six feet of snow outside. I never have to worry about it. And I never have to be away from my family.”

More than 70 percent of nonprofit-management students classify themselves as “place bound,” meaning they are unable to relocate to complete their master’s degrees, according to a study by Building Bridges Initiative, an effort sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., to link academic programs that specialize in nonprofit management with charity managers. That means many students who live in areas where no nonprofit-management courses exist, as well as students outside the United States, have few options beyond online course work.

Most online-education programs have minimal technology requirements. Students typically need Internet access, plus a computer that allows them to hear lectures or other audio items.

Nonprofit programs differ somewhat in how they set up courses, but the basic design for an online course is consistent no matter where a student decides to enroll. Instructors post lectures on the course Web site, sometimes incorporating PowerPoint and audio and video files, for students to review.

Internet Discussions

More than 90 percent of online courses use “threaded discussions” for communication between students and teachers, according to a 2003 report from the National Center for Education Statistics. In threaded discussions, the professor or a student posts an entry online, then other students can go to the Web site whenever they want and see and respond to the posted material. Instructors normally post readings and assignments this way, creating a discussion board for the entire class. Some programs require students to log on and respond to the posted material — the equivalent of being graded on class participation.

“It’s really pretty analogous to what you do in a classroom, except the big benefit is once I give a lecture online, it’s all there with the graphics and charts and everything,” says Linda deLeon, associate dean of the University of Colorado’s Graduate School of Public Affairs. “Students can come back and read it over and over again with no loss of information.”

Online courses make it easy for any student to ask questions and participate, says Zac Ryon, a Ph.D. candidate who has taken some online nonprofit-management courses offered by the University of Colorado at Denver. “It is more equitable in allowing reticent students to voice their opinions.”

Ms. deLeon, who teaches a graduate course in data analysis and previously was director of the university’s online programs, agrees, citing a study that showed that in traditional classes with fewer than 40 students, four or five students accounted for 75 percent of the total class participation.

Requiring participation in online courses and relying on written communications “is a huge advantage for introverts and people who have any disadvantage around communication, like foreign students or disabled people,” says Ms. deLeon.

Despite some of the advantages, Mr. Ryon says he does not plan on taking any more courses online, and would only recommend an online program “if it was too burdensome to go to a classroom setting.”

“A lot of the value of education comes from the interaction that students have with other people,” he says. “There wasn’t really a student-to-student dialogue like I’ve experienced in the classroom. It takes more time to compose a thoughtful e-mail rather than just talking to someone.”

Paul Haaland, who is seeking a master’s in nonprofit management from the University of Maryland University College, concedes that his experience with online education was “not as intimate and it’s not as intellectual” as a traditional classroom setting. But, he points out, “I don’t think the nonprofit program is intellectual to begin with. It’s very practical.”

Joyce Munn, president of Global Nonprofit Network, an executive recruiting and consulting company, agrees that classroom interaction is important for students of nonprofit management. “It’s not the skills they lack,” says Ms. Munn of graduates from online nonprofit programs, “it’s the interaction with other students on a daily basis.”

Before beginning her online education, Ms. Whitteker thought she would miss the classroom contact. But she credits the design of the program with helping to erase her concerns. “They have everything set up so any time you need feedback from your instructor or your fellow students, it’s as simple as dropping an e-mail,” she says. And from Ms. Whitteker’s experience, she says, “You don’t have to be sitting side by side to become friends.”

Ms. deLeon, of the University of Colorado, says when she hears people complain about the isolation of online learning, “I just joke that we’ve all heard of people who have developed romances online. So we know that people can connect and relate to one another in an online environment.”

However, without being able to see her students, Ms. deLeon says she does miss some of their visual cues that would be obvious in a classroom.

“In a classroom, I can tell by their puzzled looks that I need to stop and probe and get deeper, but there’s no way to do that online,” says Ms. deLeon. “You have to wait until they ask a question.”

‘Not for Everyone’

Even though online education was the right choice for her, Ms. Whitteker says, “distance learning is not for everyone. It requires dedication, it requires discipline, it requires the ability to manage time.”

Ms. Whitteker says those who choose an online program because they think it will be easier will be disappointed. “There are no cake courses, as well there shouldn’t be,” she says. “This is graduate school, this is not junior high.”

Mr. Ryon says his online educational experience was starkly different.

While he says that the amount of homework is roughly the same for both traditional and online courses, the amount of “class time” he spends on his online courses is minimal. “I can get online, see what material is there in maybe 15 minutes, and reply to a couple of things,” he says.

Mr. Haaland says that online courses “take some getting used to.” Says Mr. Haaland, who works full time at the Road Information Program, a Washington transportation professional association, of online education, “The best students can get a lot out of it. You have to be very motivated and very active.”

And while Mr. Haaland compares taking online courses to self-directed study, he says, “Abraham Lincoln taught himself law out of law books. It’s not like the classroom is the end-all and be-all of education.”

Hiring Prospects

While online programs are accessible to large numbers of nonprofit professionals, employers may still be more likely to hire graduates of traditional classroom programs.

Ms. Munn, the recruiter, says so many job applicants have advanced degrees that she and her clients have the luxury to be picky, especially because management vacancies at nonprofit groups are drawing many applicants in this tight job market.

“From a client’s perspective, because of the current market situation, when you get that sort of volume of applicants, you tend to be a school snob,” Ms. Munn explains. “If you have someone from Yale or the Kennedy School [of Government at Harvard], you’re going to look at them in a better light than someone who’s got an online degree.”

On the other hand, Diane Hardin, director of human resources at Feed the Children, in Oklahoma City, says online master’s programs show that an applicant is dedicated to learning as much as possible while on the job.

“People who are seeking a master’s degree may be in the work force, and often they won’t have the time to go to class,” she says. “It’s such a good option for those people. They’re able to do it at their own pace and their own schedule.”

Ms. Whitteker thinks she has had an advantage by taking courses online. “My agency is where it is because of it,” she says. “In the three-and-a-half years I’ve been going to school, I don’t think I’ve done one final project that was not apropos to my agency.”

By using Aid for Families in Need as her educational material, Ms. Whitteker accomplished many of her career goals while earning credit for her master’s. Right now she is using what she learned in a proposal-writing course to seek money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build an office for her charity.

Ms. Whitteker says she is confident she will have all the skills necessary to run the charity successfully.

“I have no doubts of that whatsoever,” she says. “I will be prepared.”