Chapter 21: How University Faculty Members Developed Their Online Teaching Skills

Online courses in higher education have grown tremendously in scope and volume in the past decade. In fact, the “explosive growth of distance education is transforming postsecondary education” (Moller, Foshay & Huett, 2008, p. 66). Allen and Seaman (2007, 2010) have tracked online enrollment for years and found that online enrollments have actually grown at rates that far exceed total student populations in higher education. In 2006, more than 96% of the largest colleges and universities in the United States offered online courses and nearly 3.2 million students took at least one online course during fall 2005 (Gaytan, 2009). Between fall 2007 and fall 2008 alone, there was a 22% increase in distance education enrollments (Shattuck, Dubins, & Zilberman, 2011).