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More colleges, students embrace World Campus By Celena E. Kusch
When the first distance education programs were launched in 1892 by Penn State, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago, Jane Addams, social reformer, was establishing Hull House in Chicago to provide services and educational opportunities to the poor, and John Dewey, U.S. philosopher and educator, was creating his Experimental School at the University of Chicago to test his education theories.	Since its inception in 1998, the Penn State World Campus has evolved from an experiment with four programs to a broad service offering 28 certificate and degree programs to more than 2,500 students in all 50 states and more than 40 countries around the world. In the process, it has begun to realize the vision of using technology to meet the changing needs of adults in an information society.   Distance Education has historically responded to changing social needs. The first university-based distance education programs in the United States were launched in 1892 by Penn State, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago. At Penn State, the initial goal was to improve the quality of life for America’s isolated farming families. At the University of Chicago, innovation with distance education emerged as part of a broader environment of social experimentation. Chicago’s distance education experiment came as John Dewey was creating his Experimental School and Jane Addams had established Hull House. It was in this environment of democratic enterprise that distance education was born.   The close connection between social need and the use of distance education technologies and methods to engage society has been part of distance education at the many universities that followed the lead of those pioneering institutions. According to Dr. Gary E. Miller, associate vice president for Distance Education and executive director of the World Campus, over a century later, that legacy is still going strong with the World Campus.   “It is so much more apparent than it was even five years ago that we are in a society that depends on lifelong learning. Our social context demands that universities respond rapidly to deliver education to students who still remain in the workforce,” Miller noted.   “The more we do this, the more it becomes clear that what we do serves a real social need, and it is not limited to the United States. Online learning is a global issue for people worldwide who want an American education,” he added.   “We have grown rapidly in the past four years, and now we are growing strategically,” Miller said. “Our focus for the coming years will be on credit courses—undergraduate and postbaccalaureate certificates and degrees. We anticipated we would focus on these programs, and we were right. Enrollments in World Campus credit programs have grown dramatically in the first five years. The demand for them has proven that these programs meet a real need for lifelong learning.”   Last year, World Campus graduate enrollments grew by 80 percent, and World Campus staff members are working closely with the academic colleges to develop more online graduate degrees. This year, the World Campus is launching an Intercollege MBA. This new program represents a collaboration among Penn State Erie, The Behrend College; Penn State Great Valley School of Graduate Professional Studies; Penn State Harrisburg; and The Smeal College of Business at University Park. Two additional professional master’s degrees are currently under consideration by the Graduate Council.   At the undergraduate level, the College of the Liberal Arts already offers a bachelor of arts degree in Letters, Arts and Sciences delivered through the World Campus. The program—aimed particularly at students who are also in the workforce—features courses in labor relations, psychology and speech communication. This year, the College of the Liberal Arts will launch a new bachelor of science in Organizational Leadership. Meanwhile, several additional baccalaureate and associate degree programs are being explored for possible launch later in the year.   Several colleges have had success with a relatively new credential—the postbaccalaureate certificate—through the World Campus.   “The postbaccalaureate certificate gives working professionals a new opportunity to continue to expand their knowledge as their fields evolve,” Miller added. “This year, we hope to launch a new postbaccalaureate certificate program in Family Literacy being developed with the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy in the College of Education. We are also exploring a Certificate in Nuclear Engineering with the College of Engineering, which sees the postbaccalaureate certificate as a strategic direction for the college.   “The power of these programs is that they allow adults who are already working to continue their education without having to go back for a full degree,” he explained. “Secondly, these degrees and certificates allow some of Penn State’s strongest academic programs a chance to engage directly with society. We can take our signature programs to the whole world, and that has always been part of our mission.”   Over the past few years, the e-learning strategies used for World Campus courses have been integrated into other Distance Education courses, including the Independent Learning courses that are the descendants of the University’s early pioneering work in correspondence study. Most Independent Learning courses now incorporate online elements that have improved student/faculty interaction and student access to richer learning resources.   “Employing e-learning strategies throughout all Distance Education programs has allowed us to integrate Independent Learning into the World Campus. The flexibility and control that Independent Learning offers to students—enhanced by the online learning environment—now is another methodology of the World Campus, but at the same time, we have also worked very hard to protect our ability to serve those students who have no access or limited access to the Internet,” Miller stressed.   “The value of the World Campus to students does not end with the courses that it offers,” he added. “Our goal is to engage our distant students fully in the Penn State learning community. This means that we also have to develop new student services.”   Although students in online degree programs do not physically commute to a Penn State campus, they still have the opportunity to take advantage of important undergraduate experiences, including full access to University libraries. Other student service efforts include enhancing the World Campus online help desk and working with University student services units to develop a career planning site for all Penn State students.   In the past few years, World Campus student services have been widely recognized for their innovation, winning grants and awards specifically for student support projects. As part of one grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the World Campus student services office, under the leadership of Jean McGrath, director of student services for Distance Education and the World Campus, is developing an online student union.   “The beauty of the online student union is that it will allow students to think of us not just as a place where they can take courses, but as a real community of affiliation,” McGrath said. “So much of what we are doing now is a part of overall innovations in the way Penn State is serving students—online and on campus. In some cases, we are bringing the innovation to the University; in other cases, we are collaborating with other units to bring their innovations to students at a distance. One of the exciting changes in student services that we have seen since the launch of the World Campus is that Distance Education is really working in the mainstream of the University now.”   Miller agrees. He praised the way faculty and academic units have embraced the World Campus as a way to deliver outreach forms of courses and programs.   “Today, all the questions about the viability of online education have fallen by the wayside,” he said. “Increasing numbers of faculty now understand and see the excitement of engaging with industries and communities through the World Campus. What we’re doing has been exciting, and we are just at the beginning. We have spent a lot of time building the administrative and policy infrastructure that will make this work for the long haul and will make the World Campus part of what Penn State means to students around the world.”
© 2002 Outreach Communications,   Outreach & Cooperative Extension,   The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108,   fax: (814) 863-2765,   e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu