Is there a trade-off between costs and quality in online education?

The proposed 90 minute workshop will involve two panelists and a moderator.  In a 20 minute plenary session, one panelist will present a “cost model” to highlight the various cost factors that occur in offering online curricula to public health students in college and graduate school.  Another panelist will present a survey of the literature on the assessment of the quality of online education, with a listing of “quality factors” that might be available to program directors.  The attendees will then be divided into teams, each of which will be given lists of cost and quality factors contained within the two presentations.  Each team will be given 20 minutes to review the cost and quality factors for appropriateness, measurability and completeness.  Then, in the last 40 minutes, each team will present the results of their discussion to the entire workshop, and the entire group will discuss the results.  A write up of the results will be submitted to Public Health Reports for possible publication.

Recent reports have found that online education is continuing to grow in popularity among students in higher education. As universities scramble to accommodate online learners, few have asked if there is a trade-off between costs and quality in online education. This workshop, moderated by Dr. Daniel Swartzman, program director of the public health management online certificate program at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and chair of the ASPPH Learning Futures Forum, will address this question by inviting expert panelists to engage attendees in thoughtful discussion.