Univ. of Phoenix CEO touts online technology as teaching tool

Daily Record and the Kansas City Daily News-Press, Jan 1, 2006 by Lora Volkert

Online schools are gaining prominence because they make education accessible to busy executives and rural residents who don't live near a college, says University of Phoenix President and CEO Laura Palmer Noone.

They're also becoming popular because they use instruction methods that reflect how people do business with technology, she said in a Boise, Idaho appearance last week.

College is becoming the union card, Palmer Noone said at a Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Speaker Series luncheon at the Red Lion Downtowner.

Of the 50 highest-paying professions in the U.S., 48 require at least a bachelor's degree, Palmer Noone said.

The lifetime earning potential of college graduates with bachelor's degrees is $1 million more than high school graduates, she added.

That makes colleges and universities that offer distance learning - including the University of Phoenix, which began offering online degree programs in 1989 - a potential economic development tool in rural areas.

In fact, 400 people in Idaho are enrolled in the university's online-only programs, with another 700 using the university's Meridian campus for a few class sessions and doing the rest of their work online.

Of course, to really offer online education, everything has to be online, from e-book texts to blog-style classroom discussions to Web- based software that tutors students in writing, Palmer Noone said.

The University of Phoenix has developed an electronic portal with course descriptions, class readings, an electronic library and a number of other tools.

It paid publishers for rights to offer texts on its website. The electronic texts have the added benefit that they can be updated with new data whenever a new edition comes out.

Palmer Noone argued that online texts give students a more accurate taste of the workplace because most professionals get their information online now, rather than from books.

The university created computer-simulated businesses, including virtual hospitals, school districts, financial institutions and caterers, each with its own corporate website.

The simulations present students with scenarios that let them make business decisions, see the results of those decisions, and perform mid-course corrections if they make mistakes, allowing students to test problem-solving skills in a safe environment.

The fictional corporate website's data, including employment and revenue figures, change in response to each decision.

One student told Palmer Noone that he crashed and burned the company three times before determining the right approach to settling a virtual lawsuit.

One of the university's professors helped the school create a computer program that analyzes grammar in student papers and is sophisticated enough to tell when a word is incorrectly used in context.

Without making corrections, it notifies students where they have split an infinitive, for instance. It has become a popular tool for students, Palmer Noone said.

The school incorporated a plagiarism checker offered by a private company into the grammar program. It compares content and phrasing in papers with online content, the university's electronic library, and other papers that have been through the system.

The program helps professors catch cheaters and helps students who are unsure of rules of attribution fix their errors.

To handle all that, the company has 425 employees in technical support, Palmer Noone said.

The University of Phoenix has 235,000 students online and at 176 campuses in 36 states. It offers 55 bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs to working adults; the average age of its students is 34 to 35.

This article was originally published in the Idaho Business Review, Boise, Idaho, another Dolan Media publication.