Today, Lesley offers a full range of less-traditional education delivery formats. The off-campus weekend format is still available, but it’s now augmented with modern electronic communication tools, and students can choose to commute to an off-campus site among more than 250 locations throughout the country. Prospective students also have the option of enrolling in one of Lesley’s "intensive residency" programs that combine home study with twice-yearly visits with instructors and fellow students, or they can pursue an independent study program, or take on a fully online degree.

The fully online version of the Technology in Education master’s degree program launched in 1997 with 15 students. Today about 300 students are taking online courses in the program. Approximately 100 of these students are also enrolled in the off-campus program of study. "We have students from 27 states and 19 foreign countries," says Online Program Director and Academic Advisor Maureen Brown Yoder.

The program is designed for K-12 teachers and educational technology specialists who are interested in integrating technology into their school’s teaching and learning community. Yoder says three primary elements have made the online program highly successful, with a retention rate "close to 100 percent." One is that "the content is timely and relevant, which is probably the most important piece. The second thing that students say is that they appreciate the feedback they get from their instructors and other students," which is partially due to the fact that class sizes are held to no more than 15 students. Third, says Yoder, is that "they feel like they are part of a community of learners. About half of our students end up going through the program together," actively making sure that each semester they enroll in the same classes.

The university’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) helps faculty develop courses for the program and provides an array of faculty training services. Many online faculty members (most of whom are adjuncts) like using personal Web sites (hosted and supported by OIT) for use within their courses, in addition to having the support and functionalities of the Blackboard CMS at their disposal. "We thought at the beginning that there would be a huge need for support of students and faculty," says Yoder. "Turns out there hasn’t been. Part of that is because the students we get as well as the faculty we’ve been getting to teach online are very self sufficient, independent learners.

"We did not invest in instructional designers and artistic people to develop Web sites," she continues. The instructors do it themselves, and I have never heard a student complain that an instructor’s site did not look good. That is not what they talk about. They talk about the content, the interaction and the community they feel part of. We thought it was going to be tough to compete with these great big universities that invest in beautiful Web sites, but that does not seem to be the issue."