A leading business magazine recently praised the University of the Virgin Islands for offering one of the best online learning models among Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States. The rankings appear in a June 6 article in Forbes Magazine.
In that article, UVI is ranked No. 3 among HBCUs nationwide, below Clinton College in South Carolina and Tougaloo College in Mississippi. North Carolina’s Elizabeth City State University and Alabama’s Tuskegee University round out the top five schools receiving Forbes’ highest ratings among HBCUs offering online courses.
Forbes writer Matt Whittle said UVI was chosen for creating a system that worked well as a classroom setting where all users engaged in the same activity, and for having interactive features through chat exchanges and message delivery.
“UVI encourages online students to participate and engage in group discussions with faculty and peers. Distance courses typically last for eight weeks and offer frequent enrollment opportunities,” Whittle said.
Online education gained the national spotlight during the 2020-2023 Covid-19 national health emergency when social distancing was urged to fight disease transmission. Its importance as a higher education delivery tool is now attracting greater interest and investment. According to the American Educational Research Association, the number of studies of online learning in higher education rose by 50 percent in 2022.
A report posted to the website www.hechingerreport.org in October said research was taking place prior to the pandemic, but the dramatic change brought on by social distancing changed many views about distance learning. “Now the results of this experiment are starting to come in. They suggest that online higher education may work better than pre-pandemic research showed,” the report said.
UVI began offering online degree programs for graduate and undergraduate students in 2018. Dr. Camille McKayle, Provost and Chair of the Department of Science and Mathematics says the school’s online course model is the result of planning and development that started several months before Covid-19 disrupted lives, livelihoods, and commerce — including education — around the world.
“We were looking at creating online courses. We were deeply exploring it at the time the hurricanes (IrMaria) hit, but we were also able to utilize the infrastructure that had already been developed,” McKayle said.
Assistant UVI Provost Ameet Jadav heads the division of Online Learning and Instruction. In an interview given a few days after the publication of the Forbes article, Jadav described the process of creating university-level courses.
“It sometimes takes eight-to-10 weeks to design the course, and then there’s attention to the user interface … Our courses have the same consistent design, and we have to be vigilant about how the faculty and the students are experiencing the courses. We also have textbooks embedded in the online courses; we have an agreement with an organization that allows us to embed the textbooks,” Jadav said.
UVI also uses an academic advisor to monitor each class. The monitor’s job is to assist students having problems navigating the system and to answer any questions posed by virtual classroom users.
Administrators say the ease of use and frequent enrollment opportunities have attracted students from across the territory and the wider Virgin Islands diaspora. “We have some students who have had some courses, but now they are coming back to finish their courses. Some are resuming their studies after their life circumstances have changed,” McKayle said.
And, the provost said, student retention rates are improving, now that online learning has become a part of UVI.
