ABSTRACT
In the fall 2010 semester, an estimated 6.1 million college students, approximately 30% of all enrolled students in degree-granting U.S. higher education institutions, were taking an online course (Allen & Seaman, 2011). This increase represents a 10% growth in online course enrollment from the previous year and far exceeds the less than 1% increase in overall U.S. higher education enrollment over the same period (Allen & Seaman, 2011). With prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford, recently announcing online courses targeting thousands of learners, some are forecasting a campus tsunami in which online education is a wave about to forever alter the landscape of higher education (Brooks, 2012; Mazoué, 2012).
