VOLUME 8, NUMBER 3, 1994
Editorial
Administrative Barriers to Adoption of Distance Education
Michael G. Moore
Articles (for
abstracts, click here)
Collaboration in Distance Education: From Local to International Perspectives
Liz Thach and Karen L. Murphy
Telecourse Persistence and Psychological Variables
Rudy R. Pugliese
Leadership from Within: Student Moderation
of Computer Conferences
Allan C. Tagg
Teaching Migrant Students Algebra by Audioconference
Kathy J. Schmidt, Michael J. Sullivan, and Darcy Walsh Hardy
Programs and Drop-Out in Universidad Estatal
a Distancia (Uned) of Costa Rica
Helena Ramirez
Interview
Speaking Personally with Alan Tait
Marina Stock McIsaac
Book Review
Reforming Open and Distance Education: Critical Reflections from Practice
Edited by Terry Evans and Daryl Nation
Fred M. Schied
Media Review
The Information Superhighway
Farhad Saba
EDITORIAL
Administrative Barriers to Adoption of Distance Education
Michael G. Moore
A common question asked by educators from the United States as well as by those who visit from overseas is, "What are the barriers to the adoption of distance education?" The effectiveness of distance education has been proven; systems for teaching at a distance are well-established overseas; there is a plethora of technology throughout this country, unlike in any other in the world. Therefore, what stops us moving forward to establish state systems, university and college systems, and others? As far as higher education is concerned, part of the answer lies in the procedures locked into administrative systems, procedures that hold back changes in the way teaching is designed, delivered, and administered. These administrative systems were originally built to meet the needs of traditional students in traditional classes taught by traditional professors. Now they constitute barriers to the adoption of distance education that originate at four levels: the federal level, the regional level, the state level, and the institutional level.
Barriers that originate at the federal level include the criteria used to determine the eligibility of programs for federal funding and the criteria applied in monitoring and evaluating programs, both of which are heavily biased toward traditional forms of provision.
At the regional level, the accreditation process still uses campus-based learning, faculty-centered teaching, and classroom-based instruction as the bases for reviewing and evaluating programs. A hopeful indication of change is provided by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which has generated procedures for evaluating distance education when institutions in its jurisdiction undergo the accreditation process.
At the state level, long-established mechanisms drive continuous investment in bricks-and-mortar education and deny the expenditures that would establish virtual universities by means of telecommunications networks. Even if they wanted to, educational administrators are restricted in their freedom to move in this direction by traditional funding formulae. I am told that typical formulae used to calculate the square footage of space needed for educational purposes, being based on traditional day-time use, over calculate on-campus classroom space needs for 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. teaching and under-provide not only for the communications technology but also for the building facilities needed for off-campus learner support and instruction for distance learners.
At the institutional level, barriers include administrative structures and procedures that are supposed to serve students but are often inappropriate for distance learners. They are found in rules and regulations concerning registration, tuition payment, student support, library services, examinations, and, most especially, in the scheduling and location of instruction.
Probably the greatest number of barriers concern the management of faculty. Until, and unless, the conditions of appointment and the rewards of practicing teachers reflect the importance of distance teaching, reforming our systems will be difficult. For example, naming distance teaching in a job description when faculty are being recruited is still an unusual practice. Assigning faculty to distance teaching as part of their "on-load" teaching responsibilities is also unusual. Few institutions provide training programs that might support and encourage faculty with an interest in distance teaching. A handful of institutions have identified criteria of good distance teaching and are applying them in recognizing and rewarding their faculty. However, rarely indeed is a professor's distance teaching as carefully evaluated as is conventional classroom lecturing, and seldom does a College dean reward a professor with a salary adjustment in recognition of work in distance teaching.
For the enthusiast-the innovative teacher who attempts to provide distance teaching in spite of the reward system-the limitations of working with a conventional administration become apparent very quickly. For example, designing good-quality distance teaching takes time, and it takes teamwork to produce and deliver. Therefore, it is impossible for a professor to teach a full load of conventional classes and to simultaneously design a distance learning course for future presentation. Yet the administrative structures of our institutions seldom make provision for the release of the professor for time (I would recommend a year) to work with the graphic designers, instructional designers, evaluation specialists, video and audio specialists, and others to develop a program for later presentation. By requiring all teaching to be in the here-and-now, administrations set up an insurmountable barrier to the development of high-quality distance education programs. Ironically, releasing faculty for such work in a design team would result in a larger-scale program that should, in the long run, bring additional income to the institution.
No barriers are as formidable as those associated with faculty promotion and tenure procedures. In many institutions the primary requirements for both promotion and tenure are publication in traditional journals and teaching in traditional classrooms. Even when a university's official policy recognizes the importance of distance teaching, faculty committees tend to be controlled by professors who have achieved their power by traditional measures of success and who do not usually give distance teaching the same consideration and recognition as classroom teaching. When a candidate's publications are under review, the unfamiliar scholarship of distance education may be regarded less seriously than are other areas of study. Generally, the distance education research that is published is in spite of promotion and tenure committees rather than in response to encouragement and leadership from that quarter. Administrators at the university and college levels, down to the level of department heads, frequently "cop out" on the question of reforming promotion and tenure committees by referring to "academic freedom" and the academic's privilege of "peer review." The innovative academic is likely to be passed over in favor of those practicing traditional teaching and research.
The question of how to reward faculty for teaching at a distance and for undertaking and publishing research into the distance teaching process has to be faced. The situation cries out for reform, and reform in these matters requires leadership from the top. Fortunately, university presidents, vice-presidents, provosts, deans, and others are emerging who recognize this need for reform and who are attempting to remove the administrative structures that stand in the way of distance education's development. The inclusion of distance teaching in the terms of service is now known, as is consideration of distance teaching in the promotion and tenure process. Such vision is still unusual, and people with the future of distance education at heart should give encouragement and support to those who display it, and press for their example to be more widely emulated.
Additional administrative barriers include the problems of territoriality and the need to devise ways of rewarding institutions for collaborating instead of competing; the issue of intellectual property and the need to reform policies to take into account the different roles of faculty when working in design teams; collective bargaining and the need to encourage experimentation and innovation in faculty hiring arrangements. There are many other administrative barriers. Because I am a teacher, rather than an administrator, I might have overlooked some that are more important than those I have mentioned, and the view of those I have mentioned is perhaps over-simplified. However, I hope what has been said will encourage readers to look at their own institutions, to identify the administrative procedures that stand in the way of distance education, and then to begin to make information about these procedures public. I hope readers will send me further, perhaps better-researched, information about the administrative barriers that prevent the development of distance education. Assembling a catalogue of the main barriers would be a valuable contribution.
As I suggested at the beginning of this commentary,
the barriers impeding the development of distance education are not technological,
nor even pedagogical. We have plenty of technology, and we have a fair
knowledge about how to use it. The major problems are associated with
organizational change, change of faculty roles, and change in administrative
structures. Here we desperately need all the ideas and all the leadership
that can be assembled. The starting point is to expose the problems.
Collaboration in Distance Education: From Local
to International Perspectives
Liz Thach and Karen L. Murphy
This article explores the various levels of collaboration
found within distance education contexts. A continuum reflecting the local
to international levels of collaboration is outlined; descriptions of
the components found along the continuum are provided, and the implications
for change in higher education institutions engaged in distance education
are explored. Necessary modifications in structure, policies, reward systems,
and instructional skills are identified and discussed.
Telecourse Persistence and Psychological
Variables
Rudy R. Pugliese
This study investigated the constructs of loneliness,
dyadic communication apprehension, two dimensions of communication competence,
and locus of control as predictors of persistence in telecourses. A telephone
survey was administered to 306 students at a community college in the
greater New York area. None of the independent variables proved significant.
Using quartiles of completion, a multiple discriminant analysis produced
a finding barely better than chance for withdrawal and slightly better
than chance for withdrawal/failure. None of the Pearson correlation coefficients
proved significant. Implications of the results are discussed.
Leadership from Within: Student Moderation
of Computer Conferences
Allan C. Tagg
This paper discusses two modifications to the conduct
of computer-conference-based master's degree courses: a maximum length
for conference messages was suggested and, more importantly, conference
moderators, or topic leaders, were appointed from among the student cohort.
Drawing on previous work on conference moderation, it is argued that the
differing power relationships between student and student and between
instructor and student result in a context in which instructor and student
moderators can perform complementary functions to ensure a more productive
conferencing environment.
Teaching Migrant Students Algebra by Audioconference
Kathy J. Schmidt, Michael J. Sullivan, and Darcy Walsh Hardy
This article describes a pilot program designed to
teach algebra to Texas migrant students via audioconferencing. Issues
related to course development, design, and delivery are discussed. The
high class grade averages and the students' increased ability to communicate
mathematically indicate that audioconferencing is a viable alternative
to face-to-face instruction for the teaching of algebra.
Programs and Drop-Out in Universidad Estatal
a Distancia (Uned) of Costa Rica
Helena Ramirez
The Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED) of Costa
Rica has admitted over 80,000 students in its seventeen year history.
However, total enrollment figures are an insufficient measure of the institution's
success in achieving its mission of democratizing higher education in
Costa Rica. This article examines the issue of student drop-out in an
attempt to determine ways in which UNED can best and most realistically
achieve the end of increased access to higher education.
