There are three separate numerical indicator rankings for online bachelor's degree programs: a faculty credentials and training ranking, a student engagement and assessment ranking, and a student services and technology ranking. To make U.S. News's honor roll of top online bachelor's degree programs, a school needed to place in the top third of ranked schools (rounded) in all three of these modules.
[See all methodologies for U.S. News's rankings of top online education programs.]
Data collection commenced on July 14, 2011, using a password-protected online system. Drawing from its Best Colleges universe of regionally accredited bachelor's granting institutions, U.S.News & World Report E-mailed surveys to the 1,765 regionally accredited institutions it determined had offered bachelor's degree programs in 2010.
Respondents were asked at the beginning whether their institutions offered bachelor's degree programs with course content at least 80 percent accessible to students online. (This threshold is in keeping with The Sloan Consortium's industry standard definition of what constitutes an online course.) Those programs selecting "yes" were then requested to report in-depth statistical information that U.S. News used to compute the rankings and build profile pages in its searchable directory of online bachelor's degree programs.
U.S. News made repeated attempts to get institutions to participate in data collection and then requested that respondents verify their data. By the survey's closing date (Oct. 28, 2011), 969 institutions (55 percent) responded to the survey. Among those 969 respondents, 194 reported offering online bachelor's degree programs while the rest said they did not.
Ten institutions that reported offering programs said that 2011-2012 was their first year offering online bachelor's degree level education courses; therefore, U.S. News did not include these new programs in any of the online bachelor's degree rankings because of their inabilities to supply a full academic year's worth of data. Their information is included in the online directory of searchable program profiles.
The survey instructed online bachelor's degree program respondents to report information across all online bachelor's degree-granting programs. As a result, questions asking for descriptive statistics on students and faculty—such as enrollment or numbers of course offerings—requested aggregations of data across all of a school's online bachelor's degree programs.
By contrast, questions not asking for profile data—such as tuition or career center offerings—could not be aggregated, and schools were asked to report what was most "typical" given the breadth of their programs. Some data provided by schools with multiple online bachelor's degree programs are consequently representative of the typical program at the school rather than being fully applicable to each distinct one.
For all student and faculty data, the survey asked schools to incorporate in their calculations to the best of their abilities only students and faculty who were engaged in online accessible courses applicable toward online accessible bachelor's degrees. In cases when schools offered both fully integrated online and face-to-face bachelor's degree programs in which no distinctions among online students/faculty and face-to-face students/faculty were made by the schools, respondents were encouraged to provide data on online students/faculty based on informed estimates. Most important was that the standards used for reporting online students and faculty in these blended programs were consistent.
Once the survey deadline passed, U.S. News analyzed the quantity and quality of data collected to determine which questions could be used for rankings. Some questions garnered response rates too low to be used. Other questions received data that appeared unreliable for various reasons. Therefore, rather than producing an overall ranking based on incomplete and sometimes inconsistently reported information, U.S. News decided this year to instead produce three distinct rankings comprised only from select questions that significant numbers of schools answered.
For each of the three indicator rankings, schools received total scores from the combined points they received from their responses to survey indicator questions. U.S. News sorted schools in descending order of their total scores and then ranked them. Schools with tied scores received equal ranks and were in equal standing for inclusion in the honor roll.
Each ranking incorporates entirely distinct indicators, meaning how a school fares in one ranking is methodologically independent of its performance in others. This also means eligibility criteria vary among the rankings. Not all schools offering online bachelor's degrees were scored or are included in every ranking, because their inclusions depended upon the amounts of data they submitted and their program characteristics.
The highest total score a school could receive if it achieved the maximum point value for all indicators was 100. U.S. News assigned maximum and intermediary point values to each indicator based on its relevance to the ranking module, as determined from interviews with decision makers in high-enrollment online bachelor's degree programs, online education literature reviews, and pre-existing U.S. News ranking practices.
U.S. News calculated schools total scores in absolute terms (relative to the school's own data) rather than relative terms. This means that there was no reweighting of scores in relation to the top performing school as is the practice in U.S. News's Best Colleges rankings.
Below are descriptions of the indicator rankings used to create the honor roll:
Faculty credentials and training ranking: Students in online programs respond to knowledgeable instructors who are skilled at engaging students even from a distance. Strong faculty in an online accessible program will have traditional academic credentials as well as experience and training teaching online bachelor's degree courses.
The most highly weighted indicator for this ranking is the percentage of program instructional faculty with a doctorate or other terminal degrees. Other factors are the percentage of program faculty with at least two years experience teaching online bachelor's degree courses, the extent the programs requires and makes available training on online instructional methods, and whether the program has established a formal, written faculty peer review process.
U.S. News computed these rankings based on faculty data used from the July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011, academic year as well as some the programs' 2011-2012 faculty profile. To be assessed for the ranking, schools must have reported employing a head count of at least 10 total faculty members teaching online accessible courses during academic year 2010-2011.
| Indicator | Weight (percent) | Scoring process |
|---|---|---|
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35 | The percentage of instructional faculty with Ph.D.’s or terminal degrees multiplied by the weight |
| Percentage of faculty with no higher than B.A. | 5 | The percentage of instructional faculty with no higher than a bachelor’s degree subtracted from the number 1, multiplied by the weight |
| Percentage of faculty with at least 2 years experience | 20 | The percentage of instructional faculty with at least 2 years experience teaching online bachelor’s courses, multiplied by the weight |
| Training required in online teaching best practices before instructors are allowed to teach | 12 | Affirmative response receives full weight |
| Continuing education in online instruction required for faculty | 12 | Affirmative response receives full weight |
| Formal written system of peer review for instructional faculty | 10 | Affirmative response receives full weight |
| Training courses on online teaching best practices administered or fully financed by school | 6 | Affirmative response receives full weight |
Student engagement and assessment ranking: Quality bachelor's degree programs promote student participation in classes, allowing them opportunities to readily interact with their instructors and fellow classmates. In turn, instructors not only are accessible and responsive, but they also are tasked with regularly assessing the quantity and quality of students' submissions, and implementing policies that ensure their students are only getting credit for doing their own work. Instructors can measure their success engaging students by administering exams that assess student participation and learning.
Engagement indicators for this ranking include but are not limited to class size, teacher response timeframe, student collaboration policy, and anti-plagiarism screening policy. Regarding assessment, schools were asked whether they administered any of nine learning assessment exams to students who enrolled in summer or fall of 2010, and whether they made the results of those exams publicly available. Schools that regularly administered two or more exams and that said they made results from two or more exams available scored highest.
The student engagement and assessment data used is from the July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011, academic year as well as some of the programs' 2011-2012 current profile.
| Indicator (number of components) | Weight (percent) | Scoring process |
|---|---|---|
| Students required to work collaboratively on some assignments | 10 | Required in more than half of courses receives full weight; required in a minority of courses receives score of 6. |
| Assessment survey instruments administered to students | 9 | A school that administered two or more of nine listed assessments on student learning, engagement and/or satisfaction receives the full weight; a school that administered only one assessment receives a score of 5. |
| School makes publicly available assessment survey instrument results | 9 | A school that made public results of two or more of the nine assessments receives the full weight; a school that made public only one assessment receives a score of 5. |
| Exam integrity | 7 | A school with students required being visible when taking exams receives full weight; no visibility requirement receives a score of 4; no exams administered receives a score of 0. |
| Maximum class size | 5 | A school’s score is the lowest maximum class size among all schools divided by the maximum class of that school, multiplied by the weight. |
| Indicator (1) | 35 | Schools received 5 points each if they answered in the affirmative to the following: policy of instructors tracking student participation; reviewing quality of student participation; providing feedback on student participation; school tracks students after graduation; formal copyright policy; school employs people with instructional designer certification to develop online courses development; school requires students to sign ethics statement before accessing courses. |
| Indicator (2) | 15 | Each of the following three indicators are scored using even distributions, meaning schools performing in the top-fifth score the full weight of five points, the next highest fifth score four points, and so forth. Each of the following are scored using even distributions, meaning schools performing in the top-fifth score the full weight: The number of hours after a student question is submitted that an instructor response is expected; the number of weekly hours instructors are expected to be real-time accessible; the ratio of nongraduate assistant staff members available to offer faculty technical assistance to the number of instructional faculty who teach online accessible courses. |
| ADA policy | 5 | A school with a central office that reviews each course for American Disabilities Act compliance receives the full weight; a central office reviews a sample of courses or academic units are responsible for compliance scores 3; individual faculty responsible for compliance scores 1. |
| Anti-plagiarism screening | 5 | All graded essay-based work must be screened for plagiarism scores the maximum weight; circumstantial screening scores 3. |
Student services and technology ranking: A program that incorporates diverse online learning technologies provides greater flexibility for students to take classes by the methods of their choosing at the times of their choosing. When used adeptly, technologies help replicate the audio and visual feeling of a traditional educational experience. Outside of classes, student services available online further simulate the benefits of being on campus by providing commensurate learning and networking opportunities.
No indicator contributes to more than 5 percent of this overall ranking. Service-based indicators include live tutoring and 24/7 tech support. Technology-based indicators include specialized apps for receiving classes on smartphones and tablets, the ability for students to receive classes through both audio and visual, and having all courses centralized into a single student information system, such as Blackboard or Moodle.
The student services and technology data are from the July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2011, academic year, as well as some of the programs' 2011-2012 current profiles.
| Indicator (number of components) | Weight | Indicator components |
|---|---|---|
| Technologies accessible to students (1) | 5 points for each component/10 points total | Application for display on tablet computer, application for display on smartphone |
| Technologies accessible to students (2) | 4 points for each component/32 points total | Live streaming audio, live streaming video, recorded audio, recorded video, software-based readers, courses centralized into one student information system, visual software, online labs |
| Technologies accessible to students (3) | 3 points for each/6 points total | Online access to bulletin boards, online simulations |
| Technologies accessible to students (4) | 1 point each/4 points total | Courses can be taken using the following: PC, Apple, Linux, Unix (and derivatives) |
| Student services | 4 points each/44 points total | Online access to academic advising, bookstore, 24/7 tech support, financial aid services, digitized library, live librarian, local area network, mentoring, live tutoring, writing workshops, career placement support |
| Digitized library | 4 points | The percentage of a campus’s physical library digitized and available remotely to students, multiplied by the weight |
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Corrected on 1/10/12: An earlier version of this article did not correctly define an online bachelor’s degree indicator relating to faculty experience. In addition, 10 institutions reported that 2011-2012 was their first year offering online bachelor's degree level education courses, which was not previously stated.
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