Online Learning Update

By Mike Malloy, World-Herald

Back in the era of dial-up Internet and floppy discs, Mary Hawkins helped guide Bellevue University into the then mostly uncharted world of online education. It was 1996. Hawkins, who was less than a year into her tenure as university president, established Bellevue’s first online offering – an undergraduate management class. Unsure where to cap enrollment, Hawkins set the class limit at 1,000. “We got eight,” she said. Not 8,000 students. Eight students. Professors also were slow to boot up. “We were literally telling people to unpack the box the computer came in,” Hawkins said. Today, Bellevue has 9,176 online students, who log in from 130 countries to pursue 80 different degrees.

http://www.omaha.com/special_sections/college-careers/online-courses-initially-slow-to-boot-now-dominate-some-curricula/article_88135ae8-b398-5d6c-9236-be0c62378d52.html