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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 2000: article | |
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Journal of General Education Devotes entire issue to Innovations in Distance Education project By Susan J. Burlingame | ||||||
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Innovations in Distance Education (IDE), a project funded in large part by a grant from the AT&T Foundation, has succeeded in achieving its purpose to help change the institutional culture regarding distance education. During and following its run from 1995 through 1998, it helped universities view distance education as an integral part of what a university provides and helped move the concept of distance education from an “if ” to a “how to.” The IDE project essentially had three goals to fulfill: to identify and promote institutional policies that support distance education within higher education, to develop a set of guiding principles and practices for quality distance education and to influence the institutional culture to promote distance education within the mainstream of higher education. The project enabled faculty to consider questions, such as: What methods of teaching courses at a distance are likely to be effective? How do students fare taking distance education courses compared to traditional classroom courses? How do professors deal with testing, papers and other evaluation issues? Over the three years of Innovations in Distance Education, faculty members from Penn State and the Historically Black Institutions (HBIs) Lincoln and Cheyney universities designed distance education courses using a variety of methods. The courses they planned and developed during the IDE project served as catalysts and learning opportunities that enabled faculty to share ideas and experiences with each other. This exchange was eventually used to develop one of the deliverables of the project — a set of guiding principles and practices for quality distance education that would provide assistance to other faculty interested in providing course offerings to students not in residence at a campus. Penn State’s World Campus has directly benefited from the lessons learned over the course of the IDE project. During each academic year of the project, a policy symposium was offered. These policy symposia, held at Penn State, were developed to exchange ideas as well as formulate another IDE deliverable — written policies to address key distance education issues within higher education. Representatives from Penn State, Lincoln and Cheyney universities, as well as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and other Historically Black Institutions participated. The first symposium in 1995 addressed administrative and financial policy issues, while the second discussed policy issues related to the faculty’s pivotal role in distance education. The 1998 symposium focused on curriculum development and support issues, along with learner participation issues. Although the third symposium was to be the last one, the AT&T Foundation funded one final symposium in response to the request of symposium participants. Held in September 1999, this fourth policy symposium enabled participants to discuss organizational models and practices for providing distance education, as well as to consider a benchmarking process to measure institutional success in engaging the academic community in distance education. During the course of the IDE project, an opportunity emerged which would communicate the outcomes and lessons of the IDE project to a wider audience. It came from former Journal of General Education (JGE) editor Dr. James L. Ratcliff, who served on the steering committee for the IDE project. Discussions with Ratcliff resulted in dedicating an entire Journal of General Education issue to the IDE project. The journal is a scholarly publication produced quarterly that seeks to answer the question: How can today’s college students be better prepared for tomorrow’s world? With critical essays, analyses and results of new research, the journal tackles current thinking and significant issues under debate in the field of general education. IDE project manager Dr. Deborah Klevans was named guest editor for the journal’s first issue of the new millennium. Klevans saw the journal as a great opportunity in several ways. “It’s certainly satisfying to expand the audience of people who might not have known very much about distance education before,” she said. “Plus, it gives participating IDE faculty an opportunity to share their contributions to distance education by being published in a juried journal.” Klevans also noted that this special issue is a way to encourage other faculty to become engaged in distance education. “The opportunity to publish is another way in which Penn State outreach programs can benefit faculty,” she added, while pointing out that the Journal of General Education has not devoted a significant amount of space in the past to the topic of distance education. Klevans called for journal submissions that would support the mission of the Journal of General Education. “We wanted to be sure the articles pertained to ways in which distance education can adhere to and promote the principles of general education, since that is what the JGE focuses on,” she said. “Other aspects of the IDE project not relevant to general education have been published in other scholarly journals and presented to academic audiences.” As with most juried scholarly journals, articles submitted by faculty and staff involved in IDE were sent to the Journal of General Education for review and consideration. In the end, seven articles, all written by Penn State faculty or staff members, were included in the journal, along with an introduction by Klevans. The first article in the journal sets the stage for the others by proposing a comprehensive definition of general education. In “General Education and Distance Education: Two Channels in the New Mainstream,” Dr. Gary E. Miller, IDE project director and Penn State associate vice president for Distance Education and executive director of the Penn State World Campus, sites his own 1995 definition: “General education is a comprehensive, self-consciously developed and maintained program that develops in individual students the attitude of inquiry, the skills of problem solving, the individual and community values associated with a democratic society and the knowledge needed to apply these attitudes, skills and values ...” Miller goes on to trace the history of distance education and the evolution of different learning environments for off-campus learning. He relates recent developments in distance education to those in general education and discusses the increasing role and power of technology to meet general education goals in any learning environment. In “Good Teaching is Good Teaching: The Relationship Between Guiding Principles for Distance and General Education,” author Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, associate project manager for the faculty development component of IDE, demonstrates how the Innovations in Distance Education project adheres to Penn State’s standards for quality general education. Ragan discusses how “changes are necessary in the way we think about the role of both instructor and student.” The resulting principles and practices that were brought forth as one of the IDE project publications apply to both resident and distance instruction, with the emphasis being on good teaching — whatever the delivery method. Ragan then describes the major principles set forth in the resulting guiding principles and practices document. Other titles included in the Journal of General Education are “Information Literacy Within the General Education Program: Implications for Distance Education,” by Carol A. Wright, education and general reference librarian, Penn State University Libraries; “Social Relationships: Learner Perceptions of Interactions in Distance Learning,” by Dr. Robert J. Lesniak, associate professor of education, Penn State Harrisburg, and Dr. Carol L. Hodes, Penn State Office of Program Development; “El espanol ... a distancia!: Developing a Technology-based Distance Education Course for Intermediate Spanish,” by Dr. Donna M. Rogers, associate professor and chair, Department of Spanish, Middlebury College, and Andrew B. Wolff, Penn State doctoral candidate; as well as “General Education Issues, Distance Education Practices: Building Community and Classroom Interaction Through the Integration of Curriculum, Instructional Design and Technology” by Dr. Jeri L. Childers, assistant director, Penn State Office of Program Development, and Dr. R. Thomas Berner, professor of journalism and American studies, Penn State; and “First Year Seminar: Using Technology to Explore Professional Issues and Opportunities Across Locations,” by Dr. Joan S. Thomson, associate professor of agricultural and extension education, Penn State, and Sharon B. Stringer, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, Lock Haven University. All in all, the Journal of General Education issue gives readers many insights into the Innovations in Distance Education project from the perspectives of participating faculty and staff. It illustrates the potential for distance education to deliver a quality general education program that meets the needs of students as well as the standards of academe. “The journal articles reflect the authors’ personal experiences with developing distance education courses,” Klevans said. “Overall, putting together this journal issue was a very satisfying conclusion to an exciting and successful project.” | |||||
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© 2002 Outreach Communications, Outreach & Cooperative Extension, The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108, fax: (814) 863-2765, e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu |
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