Virtual education leaders bullish on future of online learning

A meeting of online education leaders in Washington today underscored the growing popularity of virtual education.

Meeting at the Heritage Foundation, online education administrators analyzed the role that virtual learning will continue to play in the U.S. While traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms won't become obsolete, they will continue to be complemented by virtual learning models.

The United States "great at creating human capital but the rest of the world is catching up," said Paul Peterson, executive editor at Education Next. He went on to say that virtual learning will allow for the personalization of education and can save costs.

Virtual education's popularity has extended to the grammar school level - indicating that the number of online learners will continue to grow in the future, the administrators noted.

Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, said at the meeting that virtual education is growing by 30 percent annually. The majority of the online learning sector is managed privately, but Florida Virtual Schools, founded in 1997, is run by the state.

In the 2008-2009 school year, Patrick estimated, more than 71,000 students were enrolled in Florida's virtual education programs.

According to National Center for Education Statistics data, two-thirds of degree-granting two- and four-year post secondary schools offered online or other distance education courses in 2006–07, the most recent year for which data is available. During that year, distance education courses accounted for about 12.2 million enrollments.

By Mark Danson