The continued growth of online education has swelled enrollments at Barton Community College, school administrators report.
From 2010-2011 to 2012-2013, BartOnline enrollment increased by 4,315 (40 percent) to 14,880, and the total number of credit hours generated increased by 14,617 (44 percent) to 47,505.
Angie Sullivan, associate dean of distance learning, recently completed a report concerning online learning opportunities and challenges.
“We get a lot of students because of our online enrollment,” Sullivan said, describing a service that has “fewer hoops to jump through.” It can be done any time of day or night, and appeals to students who sometimes put enrollment off until the last minute. They can do this with the knowledge that a class won’t be canceled because it’s too small; even if only one or two students enroll, the class will go on.
The first week of each course is orientation, with no content from the syllabus introduced until Week 2. This provides a full week for students to drop the course without penalty, Sullivan said. “We allow students to shop around.”
BCC developed its electronic classes in part because the college offers classes to soldiers at Fort Riley. With soldiers frequently moving to other locations – sometimes in other countries – they needed a way to take their instruction with them.
As the number of BartOnline courses grew, BCC started seeing students from four-year colleges who needed to pick up a class that was full or otherwise unavailable at their school.
“We offer a lot of courses that some of our four-year students are taking to save money,” Sullivan said.

Quality improvement
BCC received a Title III grant from the U.S. Department of Education that focused on improving the quality of online classes. Part of the funding was used to buy technology that makes classes more interesting. For example, software from PanOpto and Screencast.com allows teachers to record and share video content and presentations, posting a link to the material on the Internet. This is preferred to posting a presentation on a social site such as YouTube, where the student may be distracted by other videos that have nothing to do with the course, Sullivan said.
Software also helps the college keep up with the challenges of online security – from plagiarism and cheating on tests to enrollment fraud. BartOnline employs a variety of software, such as TurnItIn, which allows teachers to see how much of a paper is plagiarized. According to the company website, teachers can do “originality checks,” comparing students’ papers against more than 24 billion web pages, 300 million student papers and 110,000 publications.
When conducting a proctored test, an instructor can establish a face-to-face connection online. The student can show his or her ID, and the software will alert the instructor if something unusual occurs – such as another student taking over mid-test, or the test taker looking something up online.
Instructors need to learn how to use this technology to its fullest, Sullivan continued. Thanks to the Title III grant, Barton was able to offer more training in delivering online education. As a result, 50 percent of the BartOnline instructors have achieved the status of “eCertified” teachers.
BCC Dean of Workforce Training and Community Education Elaine Simmons said students are also turning to online instruction for career technical courses. Now, thanks to Kansas State Senate Bill 155, passed in May 2012, high school juniors and seniors can enroll in some of these courses tuition-free.
BCC isn’t alone in expanding online education offerings and quality. At last month’s BCC Board of Trustees meeting, Dr. Mark Sarver, director of eduKan, discussed the latest innovations at that institution. Barton is a member of eduKan, which also offers online courses.
Sarver said eduKan is testing a biometric system to weed out cheaters and “Pell runners” who seek Pell grants and other financial aid but don’t actually become students. Biometrics identifies humans by their unique characteristics, which are as individual as their signatures, he said. Even a person’s typing rhythm online can be a biometric indicator.