Distance Education 6: Barriers To Distance Education
SIXTH IN A SERIESBarriersto DistanceEducationBy Arthur Levine and Jeffrey C. SunAmerican Council on EducationCenter for Policy Analysis
Distributed Education: Challenges, Choices, and a New EnvironmentFor the American Council on Education:Senior Vice President, Programs and AnalysisMichael A. BaerDirector, Center for Policy AnalysisJacqueline E. KingResearch AssociateEugene L. AndersonFor EDUCAUSE:PresidentBrian L. HawkinsVice PresidentCarole A. BaroneWe are grateful to the AT&T Foundation, Accenture, and Hewlett-Packard Companyfor their generous support of this series on distributed education. Copyright 2002American Council on EducationACE and the American Council on Education are registered marks of the American Council on Education.All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,without permission in writing from the publisher.American Council on EducationOne Dupont Circle NWWashington, DC 20036Fax: (202) 785-2990Additional copies of this publication are availableby sending a check or money order for 15 per copy,plus 6.95 shipping and handling (for orders of morethan one copy, call the number below), to thefollowing address:ACE Fulfillment ServiceDepartment 191Washington, DC 20055-0191Phone: (301) 632-6757Fax: (301) 843-0159When ordering, please specify Item #309379 .A free electronic version of this report is available through www.acenet.edu/bookstore
Table of ContentsForeword .iiiIntroduction .1Barriers Within the Academy .3Need for Distance Learning .3Differences Between Distance Learning and Higher Education .4Students .4Pedagogy .5Internal Governance and External Competition .6Money .8Barriers External to the Academy .9Federal .9States .13Accrediting Agencies .14Professional Organizations, Unions, Consortia, and Partnerships .15Conclusion .17References .19About the Authors .22
ForewordBarriers to Distance Education is the sixth and final monograph in a series of invited paperson distributed education, commissioned by the American Council on Education (ACE)and EDUCAUSE.Technology provides higher education with the potential to disseminate knowledge to morepeople than ever before. Despite the promise of distributed education and continued advancements in technology, significant barriers remain. This paper describes the barriers to distancelearning, both inside and outside the higher education community.The genesis of this series evolved from a design meeting held at ACE in spring 1999. Extensivediscussion and exploration of major issues led to a partnership with EDUCAUSE and a closeworking relationship with its president, Brian L. Hawkins, and vice president, Carole A. Barone.This series, Distributed Education: Challenges, Choices, and a New Environment, has beensustained with generous support from the AT&T Foundation, Accenture, and Hewlett-PackardCompany.Distributed education raises a strategic and financial challenge for every type of higher education institution. Advancements in technology and expansion of markets for distributed learningpose questions for college and university presidents, regardless of their institutional mission. Ourgoal in this series is to provide presidents, provosts, and other senior decision makers with a senseof the landscape of technologically mediated education and the means to make wise strategicchoices.Michael A. BaerSenior Vice President, Programs and AnalysisAmerican Council on EducationAmerican Council on Education/EDUCAUSEIII
IntroductionToday’s new technologies, particularly the Internet, present higher education with thelargest megaphone in its history—the capacity to disseminate knowledge to an exponentially larger number of people than ever before. To do this, educators use a vehicle nowcommonly known as distance education.1 It is a subject that has stimulated intense passions, newand aggressive competitors, pressure for new (and often very different) resources, an evolvingregulatory environment, and more ambiguities than certainties about appropriate policy andpractice—not to mention the most fundamental questions about the future of the academy.This paper describes the barriers to distance learning, both inside and outside the highereducation community. Inside the academy, distance education programs encounter numerouschallenges: the academy’s acceptance of distance education as an appropriate teaching method,competition for limited financial resources, and the ability to withstand the slow governancegauntlet. Outside the academy, distance education encounters varying regulations, laws, policies,and practices imposed by congressional and state legislators, accreditors, and professionalassociations.NOTE: A number of people read this paper and offered comments. We are particularly grateful to Michael Goldstein, who read, edited,and enhanced the paper.1 Distributed education refers to a mix of instructional practices—blending new technologies with traditional classroom practices. Thispaper focuses on obstacles to programs that rely primarily on new technological delivery systems. Therefore, we use the term distanceeducation, rather than distributed education.American Council on Education/EDUCAUSE1
Barriers Within the AcademyNeed for Distance LearningIn 1992, Peter Drucker predicted that in thenext 50 years, “schools and universities willchange more drastically than they have sincethey assumed their present form 300 years agowhen they organized themselves around theprinted book” (Drucker, 1992, p. 97). Withthe rise of new technologies, in the futurehigher education will likely divide into threetypes of institutions. One type will be the traditional campus-based college or university.Let’s call these “brick” institutions—the familiarcampuses composed of classrooms, facultyoffices, libraries, student unions, and perhapsresidence halls. The most successful brick universities will likely be residential colleges thatattract traditional students—that is, youngerstudents, typically ages 18 to 22. Another typeof institution will be new organizations thatrely entirely on e-learning to distribute theirprograms. These “virtual” schools could becalled “click” universities. The exclusivelyclick universities will focus on nontraditionalpopulations such as adult learners and parttime students. The third, and probably mostprevalent, type will be a combination of thetwo: the “brick and click” institution, whichwill fuse conventional and e-learning methods.Today’s major universities will likely try tobecome such brick and click institutions,which—according to current findings one-commerce—will stand out as attractive alternatives for students interested in onlinelearning. Recent research on commercialnoneducation businesses shows that whileconsumers appreciate the convenience, ease,and time-independent nature of online shopping, they also seek the service of the physicalstore for returning merchandise, gettingexpert advice, trying and viewing products,and interacting with salespeople and fellowcustomers (Cassar, 2001; Daniels, 2001).Based on these predictions and trends,what conclusions can we draw? First, Americadoes not need all of its colleges and universities to offer distance education programs.Those institutions that will offer distance education will be part of a small but concentratedcore of major providers, rather than a looselyorganized abundance of small providers.Schools that choose to remain brick campusesmay find that their faculty and staff are notinterested in entering the world of distancelearning, except perhaps as subscribers whocan enlarge their own on-campus programs bypurchasing the best distance education programs from other sources. Brick colleges mayinstead create their own niche, offering thebest possible in-person education and stressingclose interaction between faculty and students,and between students and students. In short,colleges may opt to bypass distance learningfor reasons that are thoughtfully and strategically related to their missions.American Council on Education/EDUCAUSE3
Differences Between Distance Learning andHigher EducationU.S. President James A. Garfield describedthe ideal of American higher education aspracticed by Mark Hopkins, the 19th centurypresident of Williams College. PresidentGarfield described Hopkins as teaching on oneend of a log with a single student on the other.In many respects, this image captures thosequalities that the academy still holds sacredtoday: teaching and learning in an intimatesetting, with a close relationship betweenstudent and professor. Such imagery causescurriculum committees across the country,year after year, to continue referencingCardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University,which describes the ideal college as a community or family rooted in the teaching andlearning of liberal education. That type of college never existed, with the possible exceptionof some doctoral education programs, but itremains an ideal to which many in academestill aspire.Distance learning directly conflicts withNewman’s vision of higher education. Far froman intimate setting among a family-like community, distance learning, by nature, is masslearning, conceivably involving thousands ofstudents in a single course. The students donot even sit together in a single classroom.They may reside anywhere in the world, andthey are learning in different places, such asoffices and bedrooms, and taking the class atany hour of the day. One-on-one contactbetween professor and student, or among students, may not exist. The differences betweenthe common perceptions of distance educationand the traditional ideal of collegiate learningare difficult for an institution to accept ordeem desirable.StudentsThe traditional college student, who attendsschool full time and lives on campus, has notshown much interest in distance education(Levine and Cureton, 1998). But they makeup less than 20 percent of the current collegepopulation.2 The new majority of college students are very different: They are older, attendclasses part time, hold jobs, have families, andlive off campus. Unlike traditional students,nontraditional students do not consider schoolto be central to their lives. As a consequence,many older, part-time, and working students,especially those with children, reported in anational study that they wanted a very differenttype of relationship with their college (Levineand Cureton, 1998). They prefer relationshipsthat are similar to those they already have withtheir bank, their electric company, and theirsupermarket. They want what they want, whenand where they need it, and at a price they canafford.The bottom line is that today’s older adultstudents are bringing their consumer attitudesto higher education. They seek four thingsfrom their colleges—convenience, service,high quality, and low cost. They will not payfor activities and services they do not use, forhiring faculty to offer elective courses thatthey will not take, for buildings such as achapel or a student union that they will notfrequent. They are asking for a stripped-downversion of higher education, absent the extras.Older adult students are suitable candidatesfor distance learning or face-to-face instruction in nearby business districts or suburbanlocations with convenient times and calendars.2 According to The Condition of Education 2002 (U.S. Department of Education, 2002), approximately 75 percent of all college studentsare considered nontraditional, and this percentage is higher when the parameters are both nontraditional and nonresidential students.4Barriers to Distance Education
The founders of the University of Phoenixunderstood this. In fact, this regionally accredited institution, which is publicly traded onNASDAQ, now enrolls more students than anyother private institution—albeit at scores ofrelatively small campuses. The University ofPhoenix offers a limited number of majors anddegrees, few electives, and instruction bypart-time faculty working from a standardizedcurriculum at times and places that are convenient for students. The university emphasizescustomer service, placing a premium onfrequent evaluation and high-quality instruction in nearby locations. It has responded tomarket demands by offering its special brandof higher education, both in a traditionalclassroom setting and online, via distanceeducation.The University of Phoenix experienceraises a serious question for distance learning.The actual size of the market for distancelearning remains unclear. The enrollment inthe online branch of Phoenix increased fromless than 5,000 in 1997 to nearly 50,000 in2002. Distributed learning may be far moreattractive to certain types of students.3 Further, recognizing the evolving character ofmuch of the distance learning that is offeredtoday, we still do not know nearly enoughabout various educational outcomes. If thebest and the brightest of our traditional students attend physical classes taught by conventional faculty, why settle for something else? Itis still not clear that “if you build it, they willcome.” Peter Cookson, president of TCInnovations—an initiative by Teachers Collegeof Columbia University that blends traditionalclassroom practices with online and multimedia components—says we do know that ifstudents do come, they want degrees or certificates, not just random online courses.PedagogyA faculty member teaching at the front of theroom remains the predominant mode ofinstruction in higher education. Universitiesdo not educate graduate students about howto teach; they have always assumed that if aperson sits through enough classes, teachessome classes as a graduate assistant, and lovesthe subject matter, then that person can teachat a college or university. Distance educationhighlights the flaws in this notion; the Internetis a highly interactive, highly individualizedmedium that most older faculty members didnot experience as students. In addition, withthe exception of a few programs, such as theUniversity of Maryland’s faculty teachingprogram for online courses, preparation forteaching distance learning courses is nearlynonexistent in higher education. As a result,most distance learning courses resemble traditional classroom courses or poor imitations—talking heads, lots of text, and streamingvideo. Distance education has failed to takeadvantage of the Internet as a new medium.It tends to be more mass than individual,to involve more one-way than interactive communication. This typical primitive response tonew media mirrors past actions: When movieswere invented, producers filmed plays. Withthe advent of television, radio actors performed on screen. And when distance learningstarted happening via the Internet, universities asked faculty to duplicate their coursesonline.Higher education faces several barriers inthe area of distance learning. First, academelacks a pedagogy for using the Internet. Theability to use it effectively will advance as educators learn more about individual learningstyles. With that knowledge, they can developsoftware to respond to the inherent differencesbetween Internet-based and traditional classroom education. Second, faculty’s role in using3 For an in-depth discussion on distributed education, see Oblinger, Barone, & Hawkins (2001).American Council on Education/EDUCAUSE5The new majority ofcollege students arevery different: Theyare older, attendclasses part time,hold jobs, havefamilies, and live offcampus. Unliketraditional students,nontraditionalstudents do notconsider school to becentral to their lives.
this technology remains uncertain. They couldbe the traditional teacher, the softwaredesigner, the content creator, all of thesethings, or none of these things. Justifiably,faculty are concerned about the effects of distance learning not only on students, but alsoon their own careers and workloads. Third,faculty need to know more about interactiveand individualized pedagogy, whetherthey become intimately involved in distancelearning or simply continue to teach traditional courses. Knowledge of this new pedagogy will be essential if colleges expect successin distance learning. If traditional studentsparticipate in distance learning, they likelywill expect the same quality of teaching intheir on-campus courses.Finally, distance learning entails a host ofteaching and learning practices that may beconvenient for students but are far more laborintensive than traditional college practices:Creating courses, maintaining chat rooms,and responding to e-mails from studentsaround the clock require far more time andenergy from faculty than traditional courses.Additionally, distance learning comes with anew language and different expectations,including “anytime, anyplace learning,”“24/7 advising,” and “round-the-clockavailability of instructors.” This new level ofservice raises potential barriers in terms ofstaffing, course loads, advising expectations,faculty support, teaching assistant roles, andso forth.Internal Governance and External CompetitionHigher education governance is highly democratic but also glacial in its pace. It may takeyears for an issue to work its way through acomplex process that can involve task forces,commissions, committees, senates, faculties,schools, department chairs, deans, administrators, boards, states, professional associations,and accreditors. This is particularly true for acontroversial issue such as distance learning.6Barriers to Distance EducationThe difficulty is that the developmentand evolution of distance learning are notproceeding on a typical higher educationtimetable. As a result, colleges and universitiesmay not be the key actors creating and offeringdistance learning. Two important groupsoutside traditional higher education may influence the shape distance learning ultimatelytakes—the for-profit education sector and otherknowledge-producing organizations.For the first time in U.S. history, the business community sees higher education as aninvestment opportunity. Increasingly viewedas poorly run, low in productivity, high in cost,and still not effectively using technology, thetraditional higher education community isseen by the for-profit sector as the next healthcare industry: another business ripe fortakeover, remaking, and profits. While thedot.com implosion slowed down the for-profitrush into collegiate education, institutionssuch as Teachers College of Columbia University are still regularly being visited by television, telephone, software, hardware, venturecapital, and start-up companies that wish toenter the education market and are seekingpartners.Higher education is an appealing industryfor a variety of reasons. Not only is it perceivedas weak and slow to change, but it also generates an enormous amount of cash and itsmarket is increasing and becoming global.“Customers” (better known as students)invest in long-term “purchases” (i.e., an education that lasts two to four or more years),thereby providing a dependable cash flow andrevenue stream. Enrollment in higher education also is counter-cyclical, which is unusualin business. This means that college and university enrollments actually grow during abad economy because people are likely to goto college when they cannot find work and todrop out at a greater rate when there are more
jobs. Additionally, the states and the federalgovernment subsidize higher educationthrough their financial aid programs.Although the gold rush attitude and thecorporate cowboys of a few years ago have subsided, there is still enough good news to makeonline higher education attractive to entrepreneurs. Success stories such as the University ofPhoenix and DeVry Institutes fuel continuedinterest. Jones International, a wholly onlineuniversity, has now received regional accreditation. In addition, Kaplan* has created anonline college and UNext, a for-profit onlinecompany, plans to offer an MBA in conjunctionwith Columbia University, Stanford University,Carnegie Mellon University, the University ofChicago, and the London School of Economics.Another notable phenomenon is the convergence of knowledge-producing organizations, which also is contributing to theincrease in distance learning providers.Publishers, television producers, museums,YMCAs, libraries, symphony orchestras, anduniversities are trying to reach larger audiences using the same new technologies. As aresult, all of these organizations are creatingproducts that resemble distance learningcourses.A book publisher recently told one of theauthors that the company no longer focuseson the book publishing business: It now specializes in the knowledge and informationbusiness, focusing on teacher education andteacher professional development. The company’s ultimate goal is to brand itself as theleading provider of professional developmentfor teachers. The publisher hires universityfaculty or persons with expertise in the subjectarea full time to prepare content for its programs. It also is considering awarding its owncredits and degrees. This company is unique inits scale, but not in its direction. As it evolves,distance learning promises to create a verycompetitive landscape.Higher education comes to this competition with three important yet fragile strengths:its reputation and history (i.e., its “brandname”); its faculty and courses (i.e., its “intellectual capital and content”); and its ability tooffer credits and degrees. Consider, for example, a brand-name giant such as Amazon.com.Amazon convinced the world that online bookselling was a completely different businessfrom operating bookstores, thus establishingitself as the top name in this new field. Educators could do the same thing by convincing theworld of the clear distinction between click andbrick higher education. This would permit afor-profit or rival knowledge organization tobecome the preeminent brand name in distance education.Microsoft Encarta is an excellent exampleof intellectual capital and content. Microsoftapproached Encyclopedia Britannica, theindustry’s content leader, and invited the company to come online. Britannica rejected theinvitation, so Microsoft bought Funk and Wagnalls and turned it into digital Encarta. In lessthan two years, it became the best-selling encyclopedia in the world, and Britannica salesdropped. Britannica contacted Microsoftabout an online arrangement but was told itwould now have to pay to put its encyclopediaonline. The lesson is that if distributors cannotget major content providers to join them, theymay choose to buy the content or develop thecapacity to create the content themselves.The story for credits and degrees is similar.In a conversation with a group of venture capitalists, the authors asked how big an obstaclestate requirements would become if a stateopposed a for-profit institution offeringdegrees within its borders. If the state wastenacious and forced the issue, the group estimated that overcoming this barrier could takeas long as five years.* Kaplan, Inc., a well-known test preparation service.American Council on Education/EDUCAUSE7Although the goldrush attitude and thecorporate cowboys ofa few years ago havesubsided, there is stillenough good news tomake online highereducation attractive toentrepreneurs.
In summary, colleges and universities mayface a very limited amount of time to decidewhat role, if any, they wish to play in distancelearning. Time may be one of higher education’s greatest barriers to entering and succeeding in distance learning.MoneyHigher education is entering a difficult periodfinancially, as a growing number of states facedeclining tax revenues and budget deficits.Since education is the largest item in moststate budgets, cuts in this area are nearlyunavoidable. And because the states’ majorfocus is on K–12 education, the cuts likely willaffect higher education disproportionately.From a national standpoint, the outlook iseven more grim when a substantial tax cut anda war on terrorism are added to the mix.Beyond this, interest rates on institutionalfunds have plummeted. At the campus level,endowment earnings have dropped. Fundraising could become more difficult becausethe value of foundation and individual portfolios has declined. At the same time, insuranceand health care benefit costs to higher education have increased dramatically. Cost savingsfrom anticipated employee turnover in previously competitive areas such as technologyand finance have all but disappeared. The message is that colleges and universities are facinglower revenues and higher expenses. It will bedifficult, under these circumstances, to sustain existing facilities, people, and programs,let alone try new initiatives.8Barriers to Distance EducationCampuses that have not yet entered the distance learning world may discover that now isa difficult time to start. For those that haveentered, it might be difficult to find theresources to grow. Securing funds to enterthe distance learning market is a barrier evenduring the best of times. Marketing can costmuch more than the course itself. The university must issue stipends and course releases todistance learning faculty, and it must factor inproduction facilities and equipment costs, aswell. Finally, the university incurs staffingcosts to administer and design the courses,and to work with faculty. Most colleges underestimate these costs. Legions of campuseshave invested token sums such as a few hundred thousand dollars only to find that theamount is highly inadequate.In some extreme instances, institutionshave invested tens of millions of dollars inunsuccessful for-profit distance learning ventures. Perhaps the most visible to date wasNew York University’s launching—and subsequent closing—of an effort to privatize its continuing education school. Similarly, the UnitedKingdom’s well-financed Open Universityclosed its American operation after only twoyears. Many well-known and well-financedcollege and university consortia have enteredthe distance education market to gales of publicity, only to fall into obscurity shortly thereafter, with little to no word on their progress.Such cases encourage caution and demonstrate that even if you build it, people won’tnecessarily come—and neither will theirwallets. On the heels of the dot.com implosion,these cases serve as yet another reminder totemper enthusiasm with practical considerations and careful, long-term thinking.
Barriers External to theAcademyFederalExternal constituents and factors play a largerole in imposing barriers to distance learning,in some respects dictating what institutions canand cannot do. Federal law and policy affectdistance education programs in four primaryareas: student financial aid, accommodationsfor persons with disabilities, intellectual property law, and international trade agreements.Financial AidWith the rising cost of higher education andinstitutions’ increasing dependence on studenttuition dollars to cover costs, students arerelying more on government aid to meet theirfinancial obligations. In fact, the federal government represents the largest single sourceof student aid in this country.Balancing the need to accommodate newdelivery media with the need to address concerns about insufficient instruction time andpossible misuse of federal funds, Congressincluded several provisions in the 1992 amendments to the Higher Education Act that limitaccess to federal financial aid for students indistance education programs. For example,prior to a recent regulatory change, the HigherEducation Act required a minimum of 12 contact hours per week of instruction when theinstitution did not operate on a conventionalsemester, trimester, or quarter system. Thisrequirement was replaced by a more liberalstandard with the adoption of a new rule thatbecomes effective July 1, 2003. Under the newregulation, an institution that offers instruc-tion through “nonstandard” term modulesmust conduct regularly scheduled instructional activities or examinations one day perweek to satisfy the 30-week academic yearrequirement. When this rule takes effect, itwill standardize the definition of one week ofinstruction for standard and “nonstandard”term programs. On the other hand, it is unclearhow the
1 Distributed educationrefers to a mix of instructional practices—blending new technologies with traditional classroom practices.This paper focuses on obstacles to programs that rely primarily on new technological delivery systems. Therefore, we use the term distance education,rather than distributed education. American Council on Education/EDUCAUSE1
BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION Main Key Point of barriers to effective communication The ideas and massage have to reach from the transmitter to receive in the same sense. If it does not happen, it is on account of barriers to communication. Main Key Point of barriers can be
‘distance’ paradox in so-called distance learning environments. The Distance Education Paradox and the Internet A definition for distance education The main defining feature of distance education is the separation of teacher and learner, usually in both time and space (Holmberg, 19
Sight Distance 4.1 INTRODUCTION Sight distance is the length of roadway visible to a driver. The three types of sight distance common in roadway design are intersection sight distance, stopping sight distance, and passing sight distance.
1-6 Midpoint and Distance in the Coordinate Plane Check It Out! Example 4a Use the Distance Formula and the Pythagorean Theorem to find the distance, to the nearest tenth, from R to S. R(3, 2) and S(-3, -1) Method 1 Use the Distance Formula. Substitute the values for the coordinates of R and S into the Distance Formula.
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Distance Learning Programs offered by it are autonomous in nature, but it is one of the few institutions whose Distance Learning Programs have been accredited by Distance Education Council (DEC), a body of the Central Govt. of India. Distance Education Council (DEC) has been set up by the Govt. of India
Higher Education – World University Ranking 2018, QS Asia Ranking 2018, Times Higher . The Directorate of Distance Education at SASTRA was started in collaboration with Distance Education Bureau (DEB), New Delhi to offer Higher Education through Distance Mode. The Objectives of the
The anatomy of the lactating breast: Latest research and clinical implications Knowledge of the anatomy of the lactating breast is fundamental to the understanding of its function. However, current textbook depictions of the anatomy of the lactating breast are largely based on research conducted over 150 years ago. This review examines the most .
