Ever wonder if the online learning team at your community college is anywhere near normal?  Is your distance learning program facing the same challenges as peer institutions across the nation?

The Instructional Technology Council (ITC), a non-profit organization that tracks online learning trends at community colleges across the nation, has come up with a loose list of 14 generalized indicators of what “normal” may look like deep inside two-year colleges when it comes to the impact of distance learning. This loose list is based on a survey of 143 accredited institutions that responded to ITC’s annual distance learning trends survey, published March 2012.

At 22, Paul Hastings may be the same age as many traditional college graduates, but this nontraditional student and online BSBA candidate from Lubbock, Texas is on a different journey than his friends.

For one, most of his high-school friends are finishing up their college degrees.

Paul will be starting his fully online Bachelors of Science in Business Administration at Thomas Edison State College in the fall. And also finishing it.

Unlike his peers, he's been working full-time over the past two years, and he currently serves as a political analyst at a non-profit. It's a job many recent college grads would be thrilled to have.

It wasn't Paul's choice to put college on the back burner -- his father asked him to hold off on college when his grandmother's illness put the family in a financial bind. But he doesn't regret the decision.

"I feel like I gained," says Paul. "I don't feel like I've missed anything ever."

A college degree was not really in Victoria Brinson's life plan, and earning an online Bachelors in English was the last thing this church volunteer saw herself doing.

“I expected to be a full-time mom for years and years, but we just weren’t able to have children,” says Victoria, who is now 38. In the meantime, she was finding a deep sense of satisfaction volunteering at her church’s homeschool program, working with kids of different ages, and teaching the basics of reading.

Victoria always loved learning, and had been a high achiever in grade school. Now, while her life is quite different from what she had once imagined, she’s getting an online BA in English, and things are looking up.