Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006

The focus of this report is online education. To be consistent with previous work, we have
applied the same definitions used in our three prior annual reports. These definitions were
presented to the respondents at the beginning of the survey, and then repeated in the body of individual questions where appropriate.

Online courses, the primary focus of this report, are those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. “Face-to-face” instruction includes those courses in
which zero to 29 percent of the content is delivered online; this category includes both
traditional and Web facilitated courses. The remaining alternative, blended (sometimes
called hybrid) instruction is defined as having between 30 percent and 80 percent of the
course content delivered online. While the survey asked respondents for information on all
types of courses, results of the analysis of blended options will be presented in a future
publication; the current report is devoted to online only.

While there is a great deal of diversity among course delivery methods used by individual
instructors, the following is presented to illustrate the prototypical course classifications
used in this study.