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| navigate: home: magazine: winter 1999: article | |
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IDE workshop and expo Faculty from three institutions propose distance education guidelines | |||||||||||||||
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Faculty members from Penn State, Cheyney University and Lincoln University, working with Penn State Outreach and Cooperative Extension, have crafted a set of principles and practices to guide the design and development of distance education. An Emerging Set of Guiding Principles and Practices for the Design and Development of Distance Education is a compilation of information that other faculty members can use to prepare courses and programs. It is available on-line at the IDE Web site at www.outreach.psu.edu/DE/IDE/. Information on cost and how to order printed copies of the document will soon be available at the Web site. This work is the culmination of the three-year Innovations in Distance Education (IDE) project supported by a grant from the AT&T Foundation, Lawrence Ragan explained. He is director of instructional design and development for Penn State’s Department of Distance Education and the Penn State World Campus and an associate manager of the IDE project. Launched in 1995, the goals of the Innovations in Distance Education project were threefold: to develop principles and practices to guide the preparation of distance education and serve as a catalyst for new learning approaches; to address institutional policies affecting the use of distance education; and to help change the higher education culture to be more supportive, by resolving barriers to the use of distance learning. The IDE project had two primary components: a faculty development initiative and a distance education policy initiative. The faculty initiative involved representatives from each of Penn State’s academic colleges who helped identify guiding principles and practices for quality distance education while working on a distance education project of their own choosing. A primary activity of the policy initiative was to hold annual policy symposia for leaders in distance education from Committee on Institutional Cooperation universities and seven historically Black institutions. Held in 1995, 1996 and 1998, these forums were an opportunity for representatives to share perspectives and develop solutions for overcoming barriers to mainstreaming distance delivery in higher education. The gatherings focused on administrative issues, the faculty’s pivotal role in distance education, and institutional support and policy issues related to curriculum development and learner services. A report of the outcomes also is available in print and from the IDE Web site noted in the first paragraph. Faculty discussed their experiences with the IDE project during the workshop Successfully Navigating the Emerging Learning Environment and at the Innovations in Distance Education-sponsored Faculty Exposition held last May at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. At that event, Deborah Klevans, director of the Outreach Office of Program Development and IDE project manager, said, “The set of guiding principles and practices that have been articulated reflect the experiences of faculty and staff from Penn State and Cheyney and Lincoln universities as they worked with specialists from Outreach and Cooperative Extension and the Center for Academic Computing to develop new and enhanced credit courses and noncredit programs to be delivered at a distance, using a variety of methods.” Ragan noted, “The document that resulted focuses on some of our core values and beliefs about effective distance education. Faculty participants spent their time exploring design and development issues related to distance education. Early in the project, they concluded that ‘good teaching is good teaching,’ regardless of the modality. In fact, the word ‘distance’ in the document title could be removed, and we’d be talking about good education. Often, as was the case during this proj-ect, distance education serves as the catalyst for the design of ‘good education.’” “Information technologies are blurring the distinctions between distance learning and resident instruction and expanding learning opportunities,” Gary Miller, associate vice president for distance education and executive director of the World Campus, told IDE workshop participants. He added, “Faculty and staff are experimenting with new ways of establishing relationships with students.” Faculty participants defined five categories for exploration during the IDE project: learning goals and content presentation, interactions, assessment and measurement, learner support and services, and instructional media and tools. During the workshop, six Penn State faculty members talked with colleagues about their distance education experiences: Joan Thomson, associate professor of rural sociology, moderated a discussion about learning outcomes that should guide the design and development of effective instruction. She said her group arrived at four key points. First, course goals must be stated up front by the instructor. This becomes the contract for the course. Second, educational and instructional strategies need to be identified that are congruent with course objectives. Third, assessment and evaluation should help students understand how they are progressing in the course, as well as help instructors learn how they are meeting course objectives, structure and delivery. And fourth, support is needed to enable course content to be delivered to realize the educational goals. Judy Ozment Payne, associate professor of chemistry, Penn State Abington, moderated a discussion on establishing a productive, interactive classroom environment at a distance. She said using technology, such as interactive compressed video, where students and instructor are separated by distance, is an opportunity to rethink how we teach. In teaching at a distance, an instructor should not rely on a lecture format. He or she has to use more creative strategies to engage the students. Her group also talked about privacy issues versus access to information. Robert Lesniak, associate professor of education, Penn State Harrisburg, moderated a discussion about establishing and maintaining the social relationships needed to form the foundation for a community of learners at a distance. He said several programs at Penn State Harrisburg create communities of learners by addressing the needs of returning adult students. Academic advising is available during hours that suit learners, most of whom have work and family responsibilities. His group also discussed the instructor’s role in protecting students’ privacy when distance education technologies, such as chat rooms, are used as part of a course. Donna Rogers, former interim head, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, moderated a discussion on assessment and measurement of students’ learning and learner satisfaction in distance education. She said assessment and measurement “starts with planning, moves to doing, then reflecting and finally changing or modifying.” Another issue of concern to faculty members is how to replace the face-to-face interactions missing from distance education delivery modes. “For foreign-language programs, speaking is the hardest skill to deal with in a distance education mode,” she said. “How do you provide that opportunity to learners, and how do you assess it when you’re not there to hear and see them speak? These are important considerations we sought to address.” Gregory Forbes, associate professor of meteorology, moderated a discussion on choosing and using instructional media and tools. He said, “It’s important for instructors to make good selections of tools that match their strengths with intended learning outcomes and then orchestrate these tools into a delivery system, rather than letting the technology lead the way.” He also talked about a software program being developed by Connie Garrett-Ingram, instructional designer with the Center for Academic Computing’s Education Technology Services, called Quiz Wizard. This program is a quizzing tool that allows instructors to create on-line quizzes without knowing any HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the language used to create Web documents). Students can then take low-stakes quizzes on the Web and receive immediate feedback. “It promises to be a quite powerful tool to allow faculty to expand their testing capabilities,” he added. Philip Cochran, associate professor of business administration, moderated a discussion on the principles and practices of providing support systems and services for faculty and students at a distance. He noted that when teaching in a classroom all he needs is a chalkboard; however, for teaching at a distance, he needs a support staff to help with the technology and instructional design. “When using technology, both instructors and students need one point of access for support,” he said. The impact of the Innovations in Distance Education project is continuing. A special issue of the Journal of General Education will be devoted to the outcomes of the IDE project and their relationship to general education issues. At least seven IDE participants are contributing articles, noted Klevans, who is serving as guest editor for this special issue of the journal. Also, a new pro-posal has been submitted to the AT&T Foundation to underwrite a fourth distance education policy symposium for fall 1999. If granted, the funds will be used to respond to requests from previous symposia participants who urged that annual meetings to consider institutional policies affecting distance education be continued. | ||||||||||||||
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