Andrea Fuerst and Maribeth Pennekamp both earned master’s degrees in education at the University of Cincinnati last year.

But while keeping their full-time teaching jobs and shepherding their children to piano lessons and swim meets, there was one thing at UC that the two Ross residents never saw.

The campus.

Instead, they took all of their courses online, working mostly at night through the Blackboard system. All of their class discussions and term papers were on the screens of their laptops, not in person or on paper.

"The first time I saw the campus was at graduation," said Pennekamp, a seventh grade teacher in the New Miami School District. "And I didn’t even have to go there."

Fuerst, a satellite teacher in the Lakota School District, said the online courses allowed her to fit the graduate program inter her own busy life.

"It’s more individualized and you can work at your own pace," she said. "My Saturdays and Sundays were just gone. We travel quite a bit, so I could do the work wherever I went."

Fuerst and Pennekamp aren’t alone. They’re part of one of the biggest trends in higher education as more and more students take classes away from traditional campuses and classrooms.

UC enrolled 2,559 students in distance learning degree programs last fall; more then double the number from 2004 and 10 times the number in 2001. Driven by Internet technology that has made it easier to connect at any time of the day, other universities throughout Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have seen similar trends.

Universities love the distance-learning programs because they increase access to a new audience of students, plus they build student enrollment without taking up expensive classroom space. Students who have jobs love them because they can set their own schedules.

"As soon as we open up an online class, it’s filled," said Vicki Culbreth, executive director of educational outreach at Northern Kentucky University.

Nationally, about 3.5 million students took at least one online course in 2006, according to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. That’s nearly 10 percent more than the previous year, dwarfing the 1.5 percent growth in college students overall.

Because the online offerings are targeted to older students who already are working – dubbed "nontraditional" – community colleges have seen the highest growth rates and account for more than half of all online enrollment, the Sloan study reported. Add virtual-only schools such as Union Institute in Walnut Hills, plus for-profit operators, and the number of offerings increases.

The next generation of distance-learning courses could move from laptops to hand-held mobile devices. The company that operates Blackboard, the online system that is common on college campuses, just bought one of the biggest mobile messaging companies.

As universities look for ways to add enrollment, more traditional students are taking online courses, according to administrators of the growing programs.

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