Students who enroll for MSU Professor Carrie Heeter's online telecommunication class can expect to view audio clips of her talking, participate in chatrooms to discuss their projects and do related exercises on the Web.
What they might not expect is that Heeter is living in San Francisco and only comes to MSU once a semester. The instructor used to teach classes at MSU.
"The lecture is an absolutely ancient way of teaching," Heeter said. "I am somebody who has loved trying to push the envelope. For me it's a living laboratory."
Although in the 2003-04 academic year, MSU offered 404 online and partially online courses, a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Robert Zemsky and William Massy said e-learning never took off like experts predicted.
The disappointment happened for a variety of reasons, including professors failing to adapt their teaching styles to a new medium, non-standardized programming options and students' lack of interest in the online version of a class, the report stated.
The three-year project looked at the trend of e-classes at six U.S. colleges, including MSU.
But online teaching is not dead, the report stated, and added over the decade, advancements will come slowly and steadily.
In the late-1990s, online education took off with the expectation that the convenience and novelty would attract students, said David Gift, vice provost of libraries, computing and technology. MSU proceeded slowly, however.
"We recognized the diversity of resources we had on campus already scattered throughout the provost office and individual colleges," Gift said. "It's expensive to start online programs. We try to choose where we make those programmatic investments carefully."
Even with the cautious start, online education at MSU has boomed. In the 1997-98 school year, 11 course sections were offered entirely or partially online with 179 students enrolled. In the 2003-04 school year, 404 sections held 7,310 students.
The focus has changed, however, in the past years. Partially online courses, or hybrids, are becoming the more popular method of instruction with course organizers such as ANGEL and the phased-out Blackboard. Students might attend class less frequently and with material presented through the Web and conventional lectures.
"This is something we're just staring to get good at - what are the right contexts to use online instruction," Gift said.
Not all professors are eager to toss out their lecture notes in favor of virtual classrooms. Agricultural economics Professor Richard Bernsten has been teaching at MSU for 20 years and has no plans of switching to online instruction.
"I think that your physical contact with the students is important," Bernsten said. "You get to know them as people instead of just a number."
Bernsten said he does put his lecture notes on the web but uses students' responses in class to modify them.
But another economics professor, Byron Brown, teaches exclusively online.
"We know we have to have materials that involve the students. You can't just put the textbook online," said Brown, who uses a strict schedule of online homework assignments and quizzes. He takes between 200 and 225 students in his section.
Students, however, are sometimes wary of online classes.
"Maybe I could save my time or study when I want, but I think there are too many advantages to class," said hospitality business senior Sunny Gu, who has never taken an online course. "I want to meet people in person."
Others found some advantages.
"The only time my class is offered this summer is online," said Brandon Trudelle, a food science senior, of his physics course. "You don't have to go to class. I can get an entire week of homework done in one day and spend the rest of the time learning and studying it."
Online classes aren't only geared toward residential students, however. MSU Global was created in 2000 as a way to market classes to the population outside of MSU.
"We created MSU Global to look at some of our award-wining programs and then look to see what market opportunities might be available," said Gerald Rhead, director of the MSU Global Academic and Professional Program. "We try to make sure there will be enough enrollment for non-students to make it economically feasible to have a program."
Master's degrees in packaging, education, youth development and criminal justice are offered completely online. In addition, there are continuing education classes or certificate programs online in areas including nursing and social work.
Marketing to the nontraditional students works best for community colleges such as Lansing Community College, said Jim Moran, the school's online course coordinator. In 2003, 4,105 students were involved with online or hybrid courses - 24.2 percent of the college's population.
"It's a lot more convenient for people who have families and full-time jobs," Moran said. "They're not necessarily full-time students."
Moran said the demand for online courses keeps rising. Since 1999, the school has seen a 21 percent increase in students taking online and hybrid courses.
"I would expect that we're going to increase the number of courses and sections," he said.
Meanwhile, The Ohio State University has few plans to beef up its online programs.
"We're more interested in critical thinking and high-order learning and that's difficult to do in an online environment," said Susan Metros, deputy chief information officer and executive director of e-learning. There are about 600 online and hybrid classes at the university.
"More of the energy is for the use of technology in the classroom," Metros said.
Meanwhile, Heeter of MSU has no regrets about switching to online classes.
"I like the intense connection with students - there's lots of e-mail contact," Heeter said. "You develop a very complete connection with them. Although, bizarrely, you probably wouldn't recognize them if you saw them."
Staff writer Maddie Trier contributed to this report.
