UNIVERSITY PARK — When Al Turgeon taught Penn State’s first completely online class in January 1998, the turfgrass man-a

professor had about 17 students. Six weeks later, that number had doubled. Today almost 10,000 students from around the country and world are taking classes from what Penn State calls its World Campus. The number of course enrollments increased 37 percent over last year. That reflects a national trend of rising enrollment in online programs even as growth in old-fashioned classroom enrollment is sluggish.

“There was a lot of skepticism, especially at the beginning,” said Executive Director Wayne Smutz.

Smutz, who was appointed to the job in September after serving as executive director of Continuing and Distance Education, said that resistance has diminished dramatically over the past 10 years, as many faculty and departments have gotten on board with online learning. World Campus offers about 63 different degrees and certificates, with the degrees themselves coming from the colleges.

Smutz said that right now, about 50 percent of World Campus students are in Pennsylvania and 75 percent are in the mid-Atlantic region. Another 3 to 4 percent are international students. One of the goals is to expand the number of students in World Campus and establish a national presence. The timing might be right.

According to a 2008 report by the Sloan Consortium on online education: “The number of students taking at least one online course continues to expand at a rate far in excess of the growth of overall higher education enrollments.”

The higher education student population grew 1.2 percent in fall 2007, compared to 12.9 percent for online enrollments, putting the student population at an estimated 3.94 million. Jeff Seaman, survey director and co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College, said in an e-mail that Penn State is among the institutions with the largest enrollment in online education.

Smutz said World Campus targets students who otherwise would not have access to Penn State, for geographic or other reasons. “That’s primary adult learners,” Smutz said. “The challenge with serving adults is most of them are working.” So the classes and work have to fit into the students’ schedules.

Take Justin Betts. Betts is a human resources noncommissioned officer in the Army who is stationed in Madrid, Spain, after serving in Iraq until January. He’s also working on an associate degree in letters, arts and sciences. Once he finishes that next semester, he plans to transfer it toward a bachelor’s degree. Betts said in an e-mail that there have been times when he’s had to drop his school work, but the rest of the time “it’s just like taking classes and working a normal job. It’s all upon the person to make time to study and do the work.”

“As I’m sure you can imagine we’re on call 24 hours a day. There are times when we only have a week’s notice that we’re going to head out to do an exercise that will last from two weeks to a month with no Internet access,” he said. “From all my experience with World Campus, all the teachers are extremely understanding of the situations that I’ve come across, as long as you give them a little advance notice.”

World Campus has a staff of about 120. They work with Penn State faculty to design the courses to be taken online. The classes themselves are part of the colleges, and about two-thirds of the faculty last year were full-time professors.

Turgeon took his Turf 235 class and adapted it for the World Campus, and now all the turfgrass management classes are offered online. A large part of the Turf 235 class involves six-member student groups that work together to answer questions and give each other feedback on problems they’re solving. “Some of the best students I’ve ever had are my online students,” he said.

Turgeon said that while he doesn’t get to look online students in the eye and glean whether they’re picking up on the lessons, as he would in a typical classroom, he gets something else instead: their thoughts expressed in words that show whether or not they understand.

“There’s a saying that you never really know something until you put it into words,” Turgeon said. “But when you write it out, you either have to know it or you don’t.”

World Campus has students from all 50 states and seven continents including Antarctica. Total course enrollment — some students take more than one class — reached 25,000 last year and is expected to hit 33,000 by the end of June.

José Francisco Llompart, a 37-year-old lawyer in Majorca, is in his third semester, working toward a bachelor’s degree in law and society. He wanted to learn more about the American legal system.

The flexibility allows him to fit studying in with his work and other responsibilities. He said in an e-mail that the “technologies the university provides (i.e. e-mail, Second Life, Twitter, Face-book) that allow me to interact with classmates, my adviser, instructors and the faculty members when necessary” shorten the distance between him and his professors and classmates.

Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.

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