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  • Most of the data used in this study are archival, aggregate data where the students have been de-identified. As a result, the work described here was viewed exempt as human subjects research by the University of Florida's Institutional Review Board. However, this analysis is a component of a larger study that was reviewed and approved by the University of Florida's Institutional Review Board (2012-U-0518). The data was provided by the University of Florida's Office of Institutional Planning and Research. Design of the Distance Education Program: The design of the DE MCS program was based on a framework of seven factors in developing online education programs described by Rovai and Downey [31]. These factors are planning, marketing and recruitment, financial management, quality assurance, student retention, faculty development, and course design and pedagogy. Successful online programs engage in strategic planning, which includes forming alliances with key partners that have important roles in the overall program vision [31]. Three years prior to officially launching the program, the Microbiology and Cell Science department (MCS) laid the foundation of a strong partnership with an important two-year partner in the same state, Miami Dade College (MDC). As the largest institution of higher education in Florida as well as in the United States, MDC represented a critical population of students predominantly from underrepresented backgrounds interested in earning their 4-year degree from the state’s premier research university. This collaboration led to a signed articulation agreement in 2010 between the University of Florida and Miami Dade College that allowed for a seamless transfer of MDC students interested in the distance education 2 + 2 program. Since then, similar agreements were signed with Palm Beach State College and St. Petersburg College. Marketing and recruiting a pool of qualified students is critical for the success of a distance program [31]. In early 2011, students were recruited on an individual basis through the help of academic advisors located at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Research and Education Centers. These IFAS centers are located throughout the state. In addition, early marketing efforts including advertisements in the community college newspapers and hiring enrolled students to help with peer recruiting. After the first semester, it was clear that the recruiting and marketing efforts were not sufficient to generate the numbers of applicants needed for a sustainable program. The services of a marketing firm that specializes in higher education distance program, Apollidon Learning, were retained. As recommended as a key factor of a successful distance program, the marketing team developed a program brand. The brand, logo and color scheme were consistently used in paper marketing materials and the program’s website (http://microbiology.ifas.ufl.edu). Understanding the costs associated with entering a distance education market is very important. One of the first financial decisions to be made is whether the online program will be organized as a separate division or integrated within the existing structure of the institution [31]. The DE MCS program uses a hybrid of these two approaches. Distance education programs at the University of Florida are structured so that the revenue generated from tuition and fees allows the program to be entirely self-sufficient. Although the DE MCS program has its own financial structure, it is fully integrated within the university in that the distance education (DE) students are considered full-time university students and have access to the same university resources including the library, disability resource center, counseling, etc. Some DE programs increase revenue streams by using a large pool of adjunct instructors instead of full-time faculty to teach distance students. From the start, the DE MCS program elected to use the same instructors for the DE MCS students as the on-campus students. The DE MCS students take the same departmental courses as the on-campus students. The only difference is that the DE students register through a specific section of the course for the purpose of tracking enrollment, tuition, and revenue. As it may take years before DE programs yield positive net revenues, the university provided an investment of $50,000 at the launch of the program for initial expenses. Originally, the DE MCS program did not include a sizeable budget for marketing and recruitment, but quickly, the value of solid marketing and recruitment efforts became clear. In return for marketing and recruitment services, Apollidon Learning receives a portion of the income. The tuition charged to the students of the DE MCS program is precisely the same level as charged to on-campus in-state students. The semester fees are also identical with the exception of small fees that only apply to on-campus students such as city/campus bus transportation fee (DE students pay about $42 less per year in fees in 2014). Because the DE MCS program and the traditional MCS program have the same curriculum, courses, instructors, exams, expectations, grading scales, and in many cases, the same mode of delivery, the quality of the DE MCS program should be very similar to the quality of the on-campus program (see Results). The university has a solid national reputation as a Research 1 university, but is also the flagship university in Florida, and its programs are accredited. To keep the quality as high and as consistent as possible between the DE MCS program and the on-campus program, instructors in the department have been encouraged to teach lecture courses exclusively through online delivery modes so that all students receive the same course experience. This approach also encourages the instructors to invest their time in improving the course itself rather than delivering material in multiple ways. Because the DE MCS program requires that: 1) all laboratory courses are taken in the classroom, 2) all exams are proctored, and 3) all instructors are readily available to DE students through discussion sessions or other formats, the DE MCS courses and degree are accepted by professional schools including medical and dental schools. As a life sciences program, several laboratory courses are required for the B.S. in MCS degree including introductory biology, introductory chemistry, organic chemistry, and introductory physics with their corresponding laboratories. All of these lab courses are taken during the first two years as a community college student or at a local college with the credits accepted by the University of Florida. The MCS major has two required laboratory courses, which students take in a face-to-face format. These lab courses include an introductory microbiology lab course and an advanced lab course that gives students a more enriched lab experience. The DE MCS program has established three ways in which students can fulfill these two departmental laboratory requirements. First, if ten or more DE MCS students are located in the same region, for example near the Indian River Research and Education Center in Ft. Pierce, the department can rent teaching laboratory space to teach the laboratory courses locally. Second, students may take equivalent laboratory courses at their local institutions that will be accepted for credit by the University of Florida. Third, if the first two options are not feasible for the student, the DE MCS program has developed a creative approach to providing laboratory courses for DE students: an immersion laboratory course. Students come to the main campus for eleven days during the summer term and take the same laboratory courses as the on-campus students, but in an immersion format of several 8–10 hour days in a row. The immersion lab courses use the same curriculum and instructors as the semester-long versions of the laboratory courses. These three options provide students with ways to meet the laboratory requirements of the degree that work with their professional and personal schedules. One recurring question from potential students, professional schools, and other interested parties is that of exam proctoring. All exams are proctored to the same extent as students who take exams in person. Depending on the course, instructor, and exam type, DE MCS students have taken exams at a regional location monitored by a paid proctor or have taken exams using commercial online proctoring services such as Remote Proctor Now from Software Secure (http://softwaresecure.com) or ProctorU (http://proctoru.com). Data indicates that retention rates in online programs may be lower than student retention in traditional courses [31]. Factors that may affect retention of distance students are that DE students are more likely to be nontraditional and therefore more likely to have work, family, and financial obligations than on-campus students. Additionally, DE students may experience a lack of personal connection with other students and faculty. To address retention, MCS faculty are available to online students via discussion groups, email, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Students can connect with each other through course discussion pages, chats, emails, and Facebook pages. The department chair meets with DE MCS students personally or by videoconference at regional locations once each year to address any issues. Recently, the department was awarded a National Science Foundation grant from the STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP) with our partners at MDC. This project focuses on using best practices in increasing STEM retention such as scholarships, peer tutoring, research experiences, and career mentoring to increase enrollment, retention and graduation of students from the South Florida region in the DE MCS program. Faculty development in online teaching has been in progress since before the launch of the program. Many of the faculty development activities stemmed from faculty interested in learning best practices in online teaching from their own peers. An annual teaching symposium hosted by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the teaching arm of IFAS, has sessions devoted to online teaching. The College and MCS have invested in new distance education tools, resources, and the technical support staff to ensure proper delivery of the courses and assessments. One important factor in the launch and success of this program was to have strong faculty support and interest. As all departmental courses for DE MCS students are the same as the face-to-face on-campus courses and taught by the same faculty, it was important for faculty to modify their delivery to accommodate the DE students. Faculty responded to this request with varying degrees of enthusiasm. However, faculty are encouraged to teach by distance in whichever format suits their style the best. For example, some faculty use in-class recording to record their lectures in the classroom while others use screen capture software and video podcasting for asynchronous delivery for students. Allowing faculty to choose their method for course delivery reduced the barrier of entry into the program. All faculty use the online learning management system supported through the university to host their online class. Recorded lectures are made available to on-campus as well as DE MCS students. Online Course Design and Pedagogy: The workshops and symposiums described above also cover online course design. One strength of the DE MCS program is that faculty are encouraged to use an online pedagogical approach that suits their needs, preferences, and design. Because instructors can utilize tools of their choice, they have more ownership and investment in the course. One unique feature of the MCS curriculum is that it integrates genomics and bioinformatics at different levels and in multiple courses. Genomics and bioinformatics are fields that integrate biology with computer science, which makes these topics a natural fit for online learning. Student enrollment and demographic data was obtained by request from the Office of Institutional Planning and Research at the University of Florida. The enrollment data was reported as student headcounts for Microbiology and Cell Science (MCS) majors in the Fall semester from years 2009–2014 for three categories: on-campus, on-campus transfer, and distance education transfer. On-campus students are individuals who entered the institution as degree-seeking students and did not transfer from another institution or attend another higher education institution previously. On-campus transfer students began their undergraduate degree at a different institution and then transferred into the University of Florida as an MCS major. Typically, these students transfer from a 2-yr institution in the state to complete their 4-yr degree. Distance education transfers (DE MCS students) are students who transferred to the university as MCS majors, typically from a 2-yr institution, but are not physically on campus as they complete their degree in the DE MCS program. In addition to total headcounts, the Office of Institutional Planning and Research provided the headcounts of Microbiology and Cell Science majors by self-reported Race/Ethnicity. The DE MCS program is in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, but students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida also have the option to major in MCS. Although degree requirements for a B.S. in MCS are the same for all MCS majors, there are differences in requirements and expectations for students in the two colleges at the admissions level. Since the DE MCS program is only available through the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and since the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences does not have a comparable distance education-based program, the demographics, retention, and quality of the DE MCS program is assessed by comparisons with the two most closely related cohorts: MCS on-campus (admitted as first time in college) and MCS on-campus transfers (admitted after attending another institution) from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Retention data was obtained from the Office of Institutional Planning and Research and the Office of the University Registrar. Retention was assessed in two specific transfer cohorts of Microbiology and Cell Science majors who transferred into the university as juniors in the Fall of 2011 and 2012: on-campus transfers and distance education transfers. The proportion of students from those cohorts who had graduated or were still persisting towards their B.S. degree at the two year time point (equivalent to a 4 year graduate rate) were compared. To measure academic performance, grade point averages (GPAs) were obtained from the Office of the University Registrar and the Office of Institutional Planning and Research. Two types of GPAs were assessed for the on-campus, on-campus transfers, and DE transfers: current GPAs (as of October 2013) for all students in their junior year or above who were enrolled as MCS majors in the Fall 2013 semester and final GPAs at time of graduation for students who had graduated with a degree in MCS from Fall 2011—Spring 2014. All figures were generated with the R package, ggplot2 [32]. Qualtrics was used to develop and disseminate an anonymous and optional survey to the DE MCS students enrolled in the Fall 2014 semester.
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