courses, history, music, art and social sciences. However, the field of education is much more 

limited in scope. 

Table 7. Distribution of institutions per subject area 

Subject area 

CISAER 

CISAER Paulsen 

Occurrences  Percent  Percent 

N=130 

N=130 

N=150 

Computer and information sciences or Mathematics 

56 

43.1 

30.0 

Prof. fields: Business Mgmt., Communications, Law 

45 

34.6 

16.0 

Humanities 

36 27.7 12.7 

Education 

34 26.2 24.0 

Health sciences 

16 

12.3 

6.0 

Physical 

sciences 

12 9.2 2.7 

Engineering 

9 6.9 2.0 

Psychology and social sciences 

8 

6.2 

3.3 

No 

answer 

7 5.4 0.7 

Biological 

sciences 

3 2.3 2.0 

Agricultural 

sciences 

2 1.5 0.7 

Too general to categorize 

7 

5.4 

Sum 

235 180.8 100.1 

Many of the institutions in the CISAER catalogue offer courses in several subject areas, so the 

sum of occurrences are higher than the number of institutions listed in the catalogue. This is 

also the reason why the sum of the CISAER percentages is higher than 100. 

Among the courses categorized as courses in computer and information sciences or 

mathematics, only 11 institutions reported to have courses about mathematics. Primarily, the 

mathematics courses were offered in addition to other courses about computers and 

information technology. These eleven institutions were: The African Virtual University [4] 

(Case Study 1), Helsinki University [32], Verkmenntaskolinn a Akureyri [41], Bergen College 

of Education [60], UNED [81], Brigham University [112], Heritage Online [120], Marcicopa 

Community Colleges [123], New York Institute of Technology [124], University of Maryland 

University College [128], and Virtual Online University [130]. 

Agricultural sciences (2 institutions) and Biological sciences (3 institutions) were the subject 

areas with fewest reported web offerings. However, there is a very broad range of subjects 

offered in online courses as shown in Table 8. 

56