Need for advocacy evident in distance ed

The new AFT report, A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education, examines the expansion of distance education into American higher education so that faculty will be ready to advocate for quality standards.

That distance education bears watching is clear. International Data Corporation reports that, by next year, approximately 85 percent of two-and four-year colleges will offer distance education, up from 62 percent in 1998.

The AFT report, which UUP’s Director of Research and Legislation Thomas Kriger helped to author, tracks the types of organizational structures and educational activities that are on the rise. These include: existing higher education institutions that have or are developing distance education programs; corporate/university joint ventures; full virtual universities; and corporate university or training institutions.

Kriger said what surprised him most was the number and scope of institutions offering distance education, although he now sees the number of newcomers leveling off.

“The big gold rush is over,” Kriger said. “Now it’s time for faculty to advocate so we end up with quality.”

The AFT report examines the different categories of places that offer distance education in order to determine what types of courses they offer, what percentage of faculty are part-time, what kind of investment was needed to start their distance education program, who handles course content and delivery, and how course management system vendors operate. The report also compares data on enrollment and accreditation.

One critical issue the report probes is how course content in some of the most popular virtual universities, such as the University of Phoenix Online, is standardized. Every course in American Politics 101, for example, is the same, according to Kriger. It does not vary by instructor, so there is no academic freedom or creativity.

“Since faculty have no control over the curriculum, it is only a few bureaucrats who control the curriculum at places like University of Phoenix,” Kriger said, noting that an estimated 90 percent of its faculty are part-time.

The AFT report also cautions against standardization of coursework that inhibits students from being exposed to the diverse views of different faculty members.

Similarly, the practice of “unbundling” a distance education course — whereby one person designs the graphics, another provides course content, another offers advisement, etc. — takes away faculty input and breaks down the teaching process, Kriger said.

The product standardization, consumer focus, tight personnel control and cost effectiveness that reflect corporate modeling are contrary to the emphasis in traditional higher education on faculty independence in teaching and research, academic control of the curriculum, collegial decision making and academic freedom in the classroom.

Yet, distance learning is flourishing, even within traditional institutions of higher education. Shrinking public budgets, hesitation to build more institutions, expanding educational access and the trend toward digital communications all up the ante when distance education is being considered.

“This report finds that distance education can be a great asset as long as academic decision making is placed in the hands of teaching professionals,” the authors write. “However, serious problems arise if distance education is organized primarily around corporate models of marketing and command-and-control management,” they said.

“While all these motivations are legitimate, there is clearly another — the perceived potential for profit,” said William Scheuerman, president of UUP and chair of AFT’s Higher Education Program and Policy Council.

According to the report: “Education based primarily on the marketplace and the model of ‘student as customer’ is too narrow. The curriculum needs to be coherent, rigorous enough and broad enough to meet student’s long-term interests.”

Over-attention to drawing “customers” may result in technology driving higher education — leading, for example, to models centered around “point and click” accumulation of facts versus a more reflective, less easily measured search for knowledge, the report stated.

Some programs rely too heavily on testing for individual outcomes and competencies, avoiding important foundations like class time and social interaction as part of the process of developing deep knowledge about a subject. The importance of same-place same-time interaction also tends to be dismissed in distance education.

“The way distance education is being organized and conducted may pose serious questions,” the AFT report summarizes. “We … are concerned that some of the trends and practices described … may inhibit rather than promote the basics of good education.”

Kriger emphasized the importance of faculty advocacy to ensure that distance education follows the same rigorous standards that apply to classroom education.

— Liza Frenette

(Go to http://www.aft.org/higher_ ed/technology for the complete report.)