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IMS Global: The one thing we hear from other schools developing online programs is the importance of consistency, making sure all online courses offer a similar look and feel.

FW: That's true. It's important for students to know where things are located so they don't have to be re-oriented every time they take a new course. The other thing we want is for the faculty member to be the content expert and not have to be a computer wizard in order to teach online. We don't want them to have to spend a great deal of time learning about course design, learning about distance education. The ideal is to offer a team approach where the faculty member who is the content expert meets with a team of people so they don't have to spend a great deal of their time. Community college faculty, as you know, teach a lot. They teach traditionally about 15 hours a week and it's not practical anymore for someone to take a great deal of their time out to learn the system from the ground up. I think we're beyond that.

IMS Global: What kind of a learning management system do you use at Ocean?

FW: We use WebCT, and Datatel is our administrative system. We contract with SunGard Higher Education to manage our information technology, and they have full-time people on our campus. So they manage everything from the telephone and administrative system to providing user support.

IMS Global: You alluded to the fact that your nursing students taking online courses tend to have different needs than your traditional students. Are there other ways that they differ in their wants and needs?

FW: I think what you find with students taking online courses is that they tend to fall within three groups. There are those who want to supplement what they're already taking so they will take a mixture of both traditional and online courses. You find others who just want to take online courses, but I don't think that's the biggest group of students right now. And the third group are those who simply can't fit a traditional schedule of courses into their busy lives. It comes down to a matter of convenience, because they couldn't have continued their education otherwise.

IMS Global: Has offering distance learning increased your reach? Are you enrolling students from outside your traditional marketing area?

FW: I don't think that it has extended our reach significantly. Rather, I think it is allowing us to better serve our local population. We offer courses on the main campus in Tom's River. We also offer courses, such as our nursing program, at our Southern Educational Center. We also offer courses in the afternoon and evening at various high schools throughout the county. We have some 3,000 students who are taking courses in that way. For a lot of these students, it's not convenient to drive 30 minutes in New Jersey traffic. It's just easier to take an online course, it offers you flexibility. We will be graduating our first One-Day-Per-Week nursing class in December 2006.

IMS Global: You mentioned that a large segment of your county population is made up of retirees and those of the boomer generation. Is that a potential untapped market for your college?