Dawn Arendas, 37, of North Huntingdon is one of 4,500 students taking classes this summer at Westmoreland County Community College -- from home.

Students taking online courses make up about half of all students currently enrolled at the community college.

Mrs. Arendas works and has children, so she likes the flexibility that online classes provide. She is enrolled in a two-year associate nursing degree program.

"I can do the advanced composition assignment at midnight or work on it at 6 a.m.," she said. "And I get a lot of feedback from my professor."

Increasingly, college students are learning in a virtual classroom, where they can participate at any hour of the day and from any location by computer.

WCCC has about 220 online classes scheduled for the fall semester, which will begin Aug. 19; that is about a quarter of the classes offered.

"There's been a huge increase in demand for online classes," said Kathleen Keefe, director of learning resources.

For the summer term, the 4,500 online students enrolled this year is up significantly -- about 20 percent -- from 3,800 online students last summer.

Because community colleges have so many nontraditional students who work or have family responsibilities, they have been at the forefront of distance learning technology, Ms. Keefe said.

WCCC offered its first online courses in 1999, with just 50 classes in accounting, business and computers.

"Online courses play a bigger part in all colleges these days," Ms. Keefe said. "The overhead is not there to maintain the brick and mortar structures. It will continue to grow, and the quality of online courses will grow as the technology improves."

Total enrollment is up at most community colleges, as well, as many students and families seek more affordable ways to pay for college in tough economic times.

"We are the least expensive college in the state," Ms. Keefe said.

The cost for Westmoreland County students is $76 a credit, and most courses are three credits, for a cost of $228. A two-year associate degree usually requires about 60 credits. Out-of-county students pay double the in-county rate.

The college uses a computer software program called Blackboard for online courses, which students access at the college's website, wccc.edu. It allows for a teacher to put different kinds of materials online -- documents, video and audio -- for students.

Students must finish assignments and tests within a certain period. A teacher may require students to buy textbooks, but because of the rising costs of books, some students use e-books or lease textbook material.

Michael Hricik of Mount Pleasant has been teaching English online for 10 years. This summer, he has 125 students and six of his seven classes are online.

"I've had a police officer from Philadelphia and a student from Maine," he said. "We get a lot of Penn State and Pitt students in the summer."

"I use YouTube a lot," Mr. Hricik said. "Libraries and colleges post a great deal of material, such as a professor giving a lecture on outlining before writing an article. And I'll use videos and then ask students to write something as a reaction to it."

Mr. Hricik also knows the other side of the learning equation: He completed a second master's degree at Chatham University in Pittsburgh in professional writing -- online.

"Any class can be taught online," said Ms. Keefe, although some subjects adapt better to the technology.

"Speech classes are tough, unless the student has the capability to submit an audio and video presentation," she said. And a biology lab is difficult, unless a student has the software to emulate dissection.

Ms. Keefe said some professors were reluctant to leave the traditional classroom at first.

"You teach as you were taught," she said. "But any of our teachers who were initially skeptical have been won over."

Some people might think online courses are ripe for fraud, students getting help with homework or tests. But Ms. Keefe says that hasn't been a problem.

"One option ... is proctored tests. Those are taken by a student in the presence of a notarized proctor, such as a person at one of our seven education centers or a librarian in a public library."

One feature online teachers are encouraged to use is a discussion board, in which all students in class are asked to participate in a discussion. It's a way of taking roll, too, Ms. Keefe said.

"Online education is not for everyone," she said. "Some students need an authority figure to learn. And they need good time-management skills.

"We set standards on how long it takes to give students feedback on assignments."

WCCC has seven education centers, where students can take classroom courses: Youngwood, the main campus in Hempfield; Laurel Center in Latrobe; the New Kensington Center; Bushy Run Center; and centers in Greene County, Fayette County and Indiana County.

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