When Hurricane Katrina forced junior Special Kirk out of Dillard University last August, he searched for options to finish the semester. “I didn’t want to fall behind,” he said. “I wanted to stay on pace and graduate.”He found a solution in the Sloan Semester, an online education experiment that gave more than 1,000 students, 50 percent of them black, a chance to take classes while they were displaced or homeless.
The Sloan Semester was created three days after the Aug. 29 rupture of the levees in New Orleans. Its organizers, a consortium of 200 colleges that have been experimenting with online learning since 1993, called on members to make more than 1,500 Internet-based classes free to hurricane victims in response to widespread university closings.
They were assisted by the Southern Region Education Board, an interstate compact for education with 16 participating states. The board assists state leaders by directing attention to key education issues, taking surveys and collecting data.
Organizers of the online experiment had been prepared to hold classes online in case of a campuswide shutdown due to an outbreak of disease, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or bird flu, as took place with Chinese institutions in the first few months of 2005.
They made it happen with a $1.1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Sixteen days after the levees broke, online classes were in session with more than 1,000 students, said Burks Oakley II, vice president for academic affairs at the University of Illinois and director of the Sloan Semester.
“We saw the devastation and realized they would have to shut down the university, so we immediately thought, ‘What can we do with online education?'” Oakley said.
Because of the program, winds that exceeded 100 miles per hour, severe flooding and damaged buildings were not enough to cancel learning for Special, 28, and his brother Famous, 23.
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, they evacuated their home seven miles from New Orleans in Harvey, La., and moved with their parents to their grandmother’s house 343 miles away in Shreveport, La.
“It was kind of like abandoning the situation,” Famous said.
Instead, they were able to study at their own pace and hold jobs. Famous Kirk took his computer with him when he evacuated from New Orleans. When Dillard shut down and the brothers regrouped, they used the computer to search the Internet for ways to continue their education. That’s how they found the Sloan program.
Special was able to work at Walgreens drugstore while enrolled online in a computer programming class at Ellis College, and in a course in Microsoft operating systems at Southern Arkansas University. He says he earned A grades in these classes.
Famous said he worked at Best Buy while earning A grades in American government, abnormal psychology and Spanish.
Seung H. Son, the calculus professor, said the other two students enrolled in that class also withdrew, possibly because they had so many choices of classes or because of unstable situations.
Special said he also had a stressful time with a database management class he took through Limestone College because of communication troubles. He was using a personal Yahoo account for the class, but he said the college later sent e-mails to a different account and he was not aware of the change. He missed the midterm and received a “C” in the course.
“I couldn’t complain, but I wasn’t happy about it,” Special said. “They gave me an opportunity to take the class when they didn’t have to, but I think it could have been worked out.”
Today, both Kirks are back at Dillard, which is holding classes at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. They say they are on track for graduation because of the online semester. Famous said he is actually a semester ahead.
Money was available for tuition, and instructors were willing to help, but finding the students was a challenge.
“These were students who didn’t have a place to go home [to] because their homes were under water,” said Oakley, the director of the Sloan Semester who is also associate vice president for academic affairs at the University of Illinois.
“Students who did register for classes often had to withdraw because they were not in a stable environment with Internet access,” Oakley said. Some began to have problems completing the courses and communicating with the colleges. Sometimes, e-mails from the instructors were mistaken for unwanted spam and deleted.
In retrospect, Oakley, Mayadas and other Sloan Semester organizers wish they had promoted the program more and worked out other kinks. Nevertheless, they say they consider it a success.
“I think it brought about some of the best of what education can do,” said Joseph “J.J.” Kwashnak, director of information technology for the Southern Regional Education Board, which funneled information from the Gulf-area students to the universities offering online classes. “It sends a powerful message to people that your life may be interrupted but your education is enough [incentive] to continue.”
The program had 1,736 applicants. Of these, 1,587 were eligible and 99 withdrew. Fifty took an “incomplete” in a course. Fifty percent of participating students were African American, 75 percent were women and most were from Louisiana, Kwashnak said.
While there is no immediate plan to continue offering online courses to Katrina victims, the possibility has been considered. Mayadas said the students’ regular schools would have to support the program. Some issues would have to be resolved, such as which institutions would award degrees.
Special said he would consider taking online courses again.
Famous agreed, but noted a difference in learning online and at Dillard.
“Online, we learned what we strictly need to know,” Famous said. “But as far as the workload, Dillard still got them.”
Marvin Anderson is a junior at Hampton University.