Members of the Online Learning Committee will present their research to the Council on Academic Affairs today.

The council will meet at 3 p.m. in Room 4440 of Booth Library. At 2 p.m., the council will break up into its four learning-goal subcommittees, which consist of critical thinking, speaking, writing and global citizenship.

The Online Learning Committee is comprised of 13 faculty and staff members. Blair Lord, the provost and vice president for academic affairs, created the committee and asked the members to complete five tasks.

The tasks are to: analyze current online course offerings and assess the role of these courses in different colleges and departments, review scholarly debates on online learning, compare Eastern’s online learning strategies with peer institutions, recommend priorities for distance education, and make policy recommendations to the Council on Academic Affairs, the Council on Graduate Studies and the Council on Teacher Education.

On Tuesday, Jeff Stowell, a member of the Online Learning Committee and an associate professor of psychology, presented the committee’s findings to the Faculty Senate.

During the meeting, Stowell said online courses can never replace face-to-face instruction, but the two can effectively co-exist.

Part of the committee’s research was on different trends for online courses including: how Eastern compares to other universities, how many online courses Eastern has offered over the years, how many online courses different departments offer, and different demographics of students who have taken online courses.

According to the information the committee gathered, about 25 percent of Eastern students have taken one or more online courses from Fall 2007 to Fall 2011.