Student Success
UF’s online dual enrollment offers ambitious high school students a path to success. Using the university’s advanced educational technology, the program removes potential barriers of cost and location to provide high school students with the highest caliber of education to prepare them for college.
Depending on your perspective, Mark Ophaug is either one of the loudest cheerleaders or one of the biggest nags for a University of Florida online program aimed at giving high school students a head start to higher education.
Ophaug, director of academy programs at Piper High School in Sunrise, Florida, beats the bushes to coax students to take advantage of the UF Online Dual Enrollment program, which allows students attending high school to simultaneously earn college credits at Florida’s flagship university during their junior and senior years. And, it costs them nothing.
“I’m a real pain,” says Ophaug. He admits to asking hesitant but otherwise qualifying students: “Are you serious about going to a four-year institution or not? This is an open door for you. Why not?”
His strategy is paying off: The number of dual enrollment students at Piper has jumped to an estimated 30 this school year from three the prior year.
It’s easy to see why.
By enrolling in UF Online Dual Enrollment, high school students in participating school districts can essentially enter UF early by logging online to take any of about 50 general education courses. School districts partner with UF to support the cost of students’ tuition, which funds technology, instructional design and UF faculty instructors.
UF Online Dual Enrollment is the only fully web-based program of its kind in Florida. The development of this campus-wide program was led by the College of Education in 2012 to fill a need to improve college access to high school students who otherwise might not be able to afford high-quality higher education, says Tom Dana, associate dean of the College of Education.
“It’s part of our outreach mission to help school districts provide opportunities for students,” he says.
In 2016, Dual Enrollment became a UF Office of the Provost initiative under the management of UF Distance & Continuing Education. Two EduGator alumni help lead the program: Litza Echeverria Rubio, program coordinator, and Brian Marchman, assistant provost and director of UF Distance Learning. Last school year, the online component served roughly 1,000 high school students. To qualify, students must have at least a 3.5 GPA and meet other requirements.
While dual enrollees don’t have to attend UF, the program can serve as a pipeline to the university, Marchman says. “Our aim is to capture the interest of Florida’s finest high school students early in their higher ed decision-making process. With exposure to UF faculty and our high-quality course offerings, we want to attract prospective Gators.”
The program has grown to serve districts in Alachua, Broward, Flagler, Levy, Osceola, Orange and Palm Beach counties, and it attracts a diverse a diverse mix of students. More than half of the dual enrollees are Hispanic, black or Asian-American.
Marchman says UF Online Dual Enrollment provides courses that may not be available at all high schools, including subjects in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines like physics and statistics.
Levy County Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Edison says another plus is time-crunched students in his largely rural district won’t have to make the 50-mile drive to UF’s campus to attend an in-person dual enrollment class.
“I believe more of our kids will take advantage of it,” says Edison, whose district began offering UF Online Dual Enrollment this fall. “It’s a good option for kids who want to go to the university coming right out of high school and who are ready for that rigor.”
Nicole Dorey, a senior lecturer at the University of Florida who teaches psychology courses, praises the quality of the Online Dual Enrollment students. They are invariably highly engaged and more apt than other students to interact with her during her video streaming lectures, live online exam reviews, and even by Skype and email.
“These are honestly my best students,” she says. “They are eager to learn.”
Seanna Clark, 17, graduated from Palm Beach Lakes High School in West Palm Beach last spring while she earned credits for taking two UF classes online: pre-calculus and Age of Dinosaurs, a science course. She says the online resources and tools — such videos of lectures, discussion forums and email — allowed her to learn the material at her pace, easily communicate with her professors and take the classes when it fit her busy schedule.
“I wanted college credit and UF was one of my top schools,” she says. Clark is now in her first semester at UF, and hopes to earn a degree in biochemistry.
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