Lectures and class discussions -- important spontaneous aspects of education -- would be captured, saved, and searchable: that key question, that insight that comes unexpectedly as teachers and students interact. You would no longer have to count on the note-taking skills of students to capture and preserve the insights of a Socrates or a Richard Feynman. The volume of educational content would expand enormously.
Publication (and hence reputation and tenure) would no longer be in the hands of a few commercial publishers (who today get their content for free from professors seeking reputation and tenure, who sell subscriptions at enormous prices to college libraries, and who take forever to produce their print publications, slowing the pace of research).
Professors would become like consultants, available for assignments -- at competitive prices -- from several different institutions at the same time.
Now, six years later, what actually happened?
Yes, there has been progress:
While some resources are available for free to anyone, many institutions limit access to their faculty and paying students.
Yes, many courses are available online, but for the most part, institutions continue to offer courses that are meant to mimic old-style education -- with credit hours and degrees. And they still typically serve up learning in large-size, semester or quarter-long chunks. And students in one class still typically have little interaction with students in others, much less with students from other institutions.
Lots of interaction takes place online, instead of in physical classrooms and hence could be readily captured, preserved, made searchable. But, for the most part, the content is not valued -- it is treated as transient and disposable. Chat transcripts are not preserved. There is no audio or video archive.
A number of official refereed journals have migrated to or been started on the Web. The Internet is used for pre-publication comment and spreading the word about research before print publication. But change has come slowly. And the traditional publications -- whether distributed in print or electronically -- still command a high level of respect and are still tied into the tenure process.
Work done for distance learning is considered "teaching" not "publication". Hence the more time you devote to developing and delivering online courses and perfecting the art of doing that well, the less time you have for activities that would help you get tenure.
While they don't value this material for purposes of tenure, many schools claim ownership ("work for hire") of the class materials that their teachers create for online learning. Not only can you not make that material available to the general public, but when you leave the school, you can't deliver that course anymore.
Contracts of many schools prevent your teaching online courses for any other institution.
What happened (or what didn't happen)?
As usual, we see an enormous gap between what's technologically possible and what actually happens, a gap between what you see in labs and in the news and in trade shows, and what becomes widely adopted and changes how we learn and work and live. It's the age-old gap between the possible and the real.
Only what people use will change how we learn and work and live.
Technology stimulates the imagination.
Marketing changes the world.
What are the barriers to change in distance education?
There are static barriers -- the human barriers of habit, regulations, and industry practice (including "standard" contracts). There are also dynamic barriers -- cost barriers: where technology drives down costs which opens business opportunities, and business drives volume, which drives costs far lower, which opens new opportunities.
The human barriers to change in distance education are normal, natural, essential elements of everyday reality. You may love to teach, but you don't teach just for the love of it. You need pay and security and predictability. You need to be able to build a stable career and put food on the table for yourself and your family.
Education is a business, not a charity. It depends on tuition fees and salaries and contracts. And the value that people are willing to pay for depends on accreditation, course credits, degree programs. And career advancement and security depend on systems of rewards and recognition, with promotions and tenure.
There's a lot of inertia there, a lot of resistance to change, and that's not a bad thing. Just don't expect miracles, don't expect radical change from schools that in many ways still closely resemble the Renaissance institutions they are descended from.
But while the human barriers are static, the cost barriers are dynamic. And thanks to the combination of technology and business, change is coming to education -- just not as fast as folks like me might have dreamed of.
As an example, let's look at audio/video storage cost.
Six years ago storage cost was prohibitively high for large-scale archiving of audio and video. My dream of saving lectures and even class discussions didn't make economic sense. And, of course, back then, you couldn't easily search audio and video files, as you can today.
But, thanks to advances in technology, the cost has been declining rapidly. Now it's starting to get very interesting. That new PC you are tempted by may have more than 100 gigabytes of storage. And business factors are likely to accelerate the rate of change. For instance, digital storage is getting so cheap that over the next few years it's likely to replace videotape for saving and retrieving television programs in the home. We already see ads for units like that which sell for about $500. If such an application takes off, the increased volumes could drive down the price of consumer-quality disk drives in general (like the use of transistors in portable radios drove down the price of transistors back in the 1950s.) Very soon, what sounded utopian, will begin to be practical.
So what's the next-generation audio/video opportunity?
We'll see increasing bandwidth on campus with gigabit Ethernet.
Bandwidth for remote students will also increase, with DSL and cable replacing dial-up.
Searchable digital audio and video, based on voice recognition, (as Virage does today) will become common place.
It will be common place for chat applications to automatically save transcripts, and organize them in threads of discussion, and embed them in forums for further discussion (as SiteScape does today).
Hence, we'll see opportunities to integrate audio/video content with text -- make it all searchable, make it easy for us to comment on it.
Meanwhile, not-so-formal education is flourishing on the Web -- continuing education -- where the goal is to learn something useful, rather than earning a degree.
Recently, several companies launched "expert" sites on the Web. Part of their rationale is that people can't find answers with search engines. This is due in large part to the fact that people new to the Internet don't know how to use search engines, and don't know about the other free resources available on the Internet and how to get the most out of them. And they come to the Internet with the expectation that you have to pay to get quality information.
These companies are setting up databases that match people who have questions with people who have the knowledge and experience to answer them.
This is an interesting alternative model for learning and for earning.
If your contract prohibits you from teaching distance education courses for other educational institutions, does it prohibit you from private tutoring? Probably not. Does it prohibit you from consulting? Probably not. Does it even foresee the possibility of your getting paid for providing answers, information, and instruction online in small chunks, to random customers? Probably not.
Check out some of these startups:
Today, well-established Web-based services strive to help you find the place where you can find the people with answers, who are willing to share in the old pre-Web Internet style. Deja.com (now owned by Google) does this for newsgroups, Liszt.com for distribution lists, and Forumone for forums.
But these new "expert" startups don't just point you to somewhere else for answers. They deliver the answers directly to you. These startups are geared to Internet newcomers, for users who:
Believe it or not, in many cases, these people would rather pay. They'll value the answers more if they have to pay for them.
So where does this take us?
I see a new utopia in the works -- a more practical, doable vision of where distance education is headed.
First, I see an emphasis of matching people-to-people for learning and earning, in the style of these startups. Databases will help match people with people, as the basis for paid online tutor and mentor services, without institutional boundaries.
So try out those new sites and maybe make a few dollars today, while you figure out how to adapt that model to be effective for education. And spread the word -- make sure your department head signs up as an expert, too. That's your best insurance against the creation of new restrictive policies and contract terms -- get the decision-makers involved on a personal basis, get self-interest working on your side.
At the same time, I hope and expect to see more reciprocal agreements to expand academic sharing.
We have plenty of examples of grassroots sharing over the Internet:
Is that truly necessary? Or is it a matter of inertia?
Consider inter-library loan programs as an example of how institutions can share their intellectual property for the benefit of all. Why not negotiate similar reciprocal agreements for sharing distance learning resources and even people? This could include course materials, controlled access to particular teachers as online guest lecturers, plus audio/video of lectures and class discussions.
Let's imagine that costs drop to the point where it becomes relatively inexpensive to save lectures and course discussions in audio and maybe video form and to make those digital files searchable. Then give millions of students around the world the right to do such searches and to access the files that match. Demand from a single institution would probably not be enough to justify the effort -- who aside from the students in the class would be interested? Yes, it would help those who couldn't attend that particular lecture. Yes it would make it easier to review for exams, even when you don't have notes of the lectures. But that's still very few people per gigabyte or even terabyte of storage. But when those files might be accessed by students from other institutions, that changes the equation.
Save, index, and share spontaneous educational content: transient Web content -- like chat; transient classroom content -- like the lecture that is delivered spontaneously from rough notes, and the unexpected classroom exchange.
We also can expect to see more alternatives to traditional publishing: not just putting text on the Web instead of or in addition to paper, but treating the Web as a different medium. Remember that copyright covers the particular expression of your ideas, not the ideas themselves. So in learning to adapt your ideas to a new medium you are opening new opportunities for selling your writing. Your college may have locked up the copyright on your online teaching materials as "work for hire." But you might be able to be paid for different expressions of those same thoughts. As an example of this direction, take a look at Attenza.com (formerly Learnlots). They are repackaging tutorial content for the Web, in easily digestible chunks of instruction that take no more than a few minutes to read and absorb; interrelated in series.
Meanwhile, we need to institutionalize and reward Web-based academic functions. Much of the work that is necessary for the success of a distance education program is not valued at all by the administration today. It's work that you are supposed to just fit in somehow. What you do to make your course easily accessible over the Web, the time you put in for online interaction with students, the research to track down and make accessible useful online resources, that's just taken for granted. Print publication counts toward tenure. Online activities count for zilch.
The people who perform important functions should be given important titles, and be paid commensurate with the value of what they do, and have their workloads adjusted so they can give these activities the right kind of attention.
Consider the model of About.com (formerly The Mining Company). Their guides organize resources relating to a particular subject, answer questions, and in the process build personal reputation. Imagine formalizing such a role within a department. The online guide for molecular biophysics at your school might help your school develop an international reputation in that field by serving as a guide not just for your school, but also for students and faculty elsewhere.
Consider also the example of iSyndicate.com, which distributes Web content (for a price) across a variety of commercial Web sites. The writer gets paid. And the Web sites get content that their visitors are interested in.
Why not syndicate course modules in a similar way? Not entire courses -- that would be more a distance education clearinghouse kind of operation, like Western Governance. Rather, syndicate one lecture or a few interrelated lectures, or even discrete elements of a single lecture or class experience.
Imagine that you as a teacher or administrator are trying to put together all the pieces you need for a distance education class. You could search here to find pieces that you need to complete or enhance a course you plan to offer. Or if you are a creative distance education teacher, you could have your materials and your time (as guest lecturer) offered in this mode.
In this case, you would probably be prevented by contract from listing your own material and your own services as an individual and getting paid as an individual. But your institution might want to list you -- and get paid for your work and your services, or qualify for reciprocal benefits from the other institution.
Then suddenly distance education ceases to be just a another form of teaching, which, strangely, most colleges have never valued. Rather it becomes a way to enhance the reputation of the institution and the department and to generate new revenue or other benefits for them.
You might think of this scheme as "educational outsourcing." You can mix and match to build/enhance an online course: focus on what you do best and "outsource" the rest. And at the same time, your college offers your services in this mode, with prices determined by demand, which depends on reputation. Then the quality of your teaching becomes a source of additional revenue for your institution, and your cross-institutional work builds your reputation and that of your institution/department.
Hence, over time, distance education gradually becomes a key factor in tenure decisions.
In summary, very interesting opportunities are
opening up, opportunities that could greatly change how people
teach and learn, and how they get paid for their teaching. It
will take a lot of creativity and effort on the part of many
people to make this practical utopia a reality -- but it can be
done. Spread the word and help change the world.
For a high-tech company to successfully introduce a product that is significantly new and different, the product has to appeal to different kinds of customers in sequence -- to "innovators" and "visionaries" in the early going, then to "pragmatists", followed by "conservatives." The "chasm" refers to the gap between the visionaries and the pragmatists, who have very different needs and who evaluate products in very different ways. While the visionaries are relatively quick to adopt new technology, there are very few of them. And while the pragmatists represent a large market, they will only buy after a product has been proven effective by other customers like themselves.
Much in this book rang loud and clear and
true. In other places, it was evident that Moore was writing
prior to the era of the Internet business.
p. 28, Moore defines "market ... for the purposes of high tech" as --
Before the dawn of Internet business, a market was a given (you decided to "enter" an existing market), or it took a long time to establish and define a new market for a new class of products/services.
Now, with Internet capabilities, instead of "finding" a market, you can create one.
"Community" -- a loyal Internet audience -- is a set of people who will "reference each other when making a buying decision." Build a self-sustaining on-line community, and you build a new niche market.
Bear in mind, that for this approach to work, you need to do more than just provide marketing information at your Web site, and more than have your people interact with your potential customers and partners. You also need to provide a means for the members of your audience to interact with one another, otherwise they won't "reference each other".
Is the chasm something that will be with us forever (something we keep doing to ourselves because of human nature) or is it a temporary phenomenon?
I believe that it can, at least, be narrowed, and that the Internet provides the mechanism that makes that possible.
Yes, people have different personality characteristics. Yes, technology moves very fast, and different people relate to change in different ways. But gaps can be narrowed and bridged through relationship building and community building.
The ideal situation would be a market defined by an on-line community, which acted as a "learning community" (in the sense of "learning" organizations/companies).
In its most rudimentary form, such a community can be built around mailing lists and scheduled chat sessions (like my Thursday sessions at http://www.web-net.org) and forums for threaded thoughtful dialogue. In such an environment, people feel free to speak up not because they feel they are experts, but rather because they want to understand. They express their suspicions, inklings, instincts, guesses, seeking discussion that will help refine, correct, and validate their thoughts.
As technology advances, you incorporate the latest means of connecting people-to-people (like Firefly's collaborative filtering methods http://www.firefly.com, which help link together people with similar tastes and interests). Pragmatists and conservatives become familiar with the latest advances as new mechanisms for continuing an on-going dialogue, rather than as discontinuous innovation.
The "chasm" (like the old "generation gap," which we no longer hear of) is a communication gap. You narrow it by getting people to talk to one another, to treat one another's ideas with respect, and to learn from one another.
Ideally, the community would welcome and involve technology gurus, visionaries, pragmatists, and conservatives -- all talking about matters of common concern and interest.
And community interaction need not be limited to on-line activities, but rather could involve face-to-face meetings, and focus-group feedback (both remote and face-to-face) and even formal training sessions (both remote and local).
Hence, in this model, techniques of training and distance education become central to the business proposition.
In the learning market-community outlined above, communication is central -- but not just "two-way". It's not just a matter of vendors talking to and listening to partners and customers. It's also a matter of creating an environment where the customers and potential customers and partners regularly and naturally talk to one another. And the customers and partners in this process are also learning how to build relationships with and serve their customers and partners.
Given this orientation, the focus, for any company doing business on the Internet should be not on the transaction, but rather on the relationship. Ease of handling secure on-line transactions is important only insofar as it is a convenience to the buyer. Other factors are often far more important in building and maintaining relationships with customers, (and perhaps far less expensive to implement).
For instance, an established retail business with a large chain of physical stores probably has little to gain from investing in an on-line transaction system to try to compete head-to-head against Internet-only no-inventory retail operations. Every sale that happens entirely on-line deprives them of the opportunity of building a closer relationship with the customer and encouraging the impulse purchase of other related items. Yes, if the chain has limited geographic coverage, an on-line presence could extend their reach to new customers. But for chains that are wide-spread -- that have already made an enormous investment in bricks and mortar, in inventory and organizational infrastructure, and in broadcast advertising, there is much more to be gained from using the Internet to better serve their customers. The on-line presence should support the physical stores, make them more attractive and useful. In many cases, people would prefer instant gratification, getting the goods they want the day they decide to buy them, rather than having to wait a day or a week for delivery.
Over the Internet, a retail chain could offer store-specific on-line inventory status, with the ability to reserve an item for pickup later that day. Based on previous purchases, they could send automatic email reminders when the customer is likely to be running out of an item and need more, and sales alert messages about special offers and prices. Depending on the product, perhaps they could/should provide on-line pre-sales and post-sales support, supplementing and, in part, replacing telephone support; and done in such a way that answers are saved and are searchable and that customers have ways to help one another. If appropriate for the kind of goods sold, the retailer should also try to create an on-line community for customers, and supplement the on-line interaction with face-to-face special events at the physical stores. Make the physical stores an asset rather than a liability.
Today the Internet is being used by educational institutions largely as a marketing tool, for disseminating information about their existing courses and as a way of distributing course materials. The Internet is a vast, searchable, interconnected library, which can be readily accessed from anywhere. So small remote schools without much money can use the Internet to provide their students with access to the best, most current information resources in the world. And professors at such small remote schools can make themselves known in a global arena.
Those are enormous capabilities and opportunities. But the next stage is even more interesting, with the Internet becoming the basis for new ways of learning and new business models for educational institutions and training companies.
When the interactive element is added to the Web through the use of collaborative tools, -- the Internet, in conjunction with other distance-learning media like television and videoconferencing, can make it less expensive and easier to deliver true education and training to global audiences.
That's the promise. But how close are we to that goal?
John Sumser recently made a provocative observation at his Internet Business Network Web site http://www.interbiznet.com/ibn/nomad.html
"We have an allergic reaction to the use of the term community in regards to the Web. Though vogue, we think that the term seriously distracts attention from the power of the medium. With lurker to poster ratios averaging greater than 9 to 1, the idea that public participation is a panacea seems far-fetched. Can you name a website that you found so compelling that you had to add your two cents to the 'dialog'?".[December 28, 1995]
So what does it take to get people to actively participate in Web-based forums and chat? This is an important question for Web sites which would like to use such tools to build their audience and even to stage for-a-fee events that provide the opportunity to interact with celebrities and experts. And it's even more important for determining the usefulness of this medium for distance education and training.
In the absence of such data, we can only speculate about the key factors that might affect participation. Of course, it's important to start with topics that are compelling to the target audience. But there are some factors that could raise or lower participation regardless of the topic.
1) Registration
Public non-moderated newsgroups require no registration. Anyone can read them, and any reader, on a whim, can submit a response or create a new topic. These newsgroups are in a legal void. They do not reside on just one server, but rather are duplicated and perpetuated on numerous machines around the world. There is no central point of control, and there is no systematic censorship. The users themselves very effectively police these newsgroups, informally enforcing rules of "netiquette" and striving to keep the discussion relevant to the topic for which a newsgroup was created. But, under what seems to be the current legal interpretation, no one except the poster is legally responsible for the content, which could conceivably be libelous or include misuse of copyrighted material.
When a Web site includes a discussion area, even if the topics under discussion resemble a newsgroup, the owner of the site could conceivably be held liable for the content. (Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, and that there is -- to the best of my knowledge -- no case law yet relating to this new medium. I am simply speculating.) If participation were very high -- thousands or tens of thousands of messages -- and the manager of the site clearly indicated that the discussion would not be moderated, it seems probable that the site would not be held liable for material posted there, so long as they removed postings that were flagrantly libelous or copyright infringements or otherwise illegal once these were brought to their attention. If participation were low -- dozens or even hundreds of messages -- a judge might reasonably expect that the site manager could and should be aware of the content and might be expected to police the discussion, despite disclaimers about no moderation.
So, as a protection for the Web site manager, some Web-based discussion software includes a registration feature. This can include email confirmation and password access, so the manager has some level ofassurance that the person doing the posting is in fact who he/she says he/she is. Such a feature makes it easy for the manager to exclude anyone who misbehaves on-line -- membership is clearly a privilege which can be withdrawn. It also enables the site manager to make some forums/discussions open to the general public and to restrict others, which opens up the possibility of charging for special on-line events, including distance education/training programs.
But at the same time, registration cuts down on participation. In a public forum, the casual reader cannot spontaneously decide to respond to a provocative remark. Rather, you might have to fill out a form and wait for an email reply before you can have your say. And by the time the registration is in effect, you've probably lost your passion if not your idea, and you remain a lurker, rather than becoming a participant.
My guess is that such a procedure probably cuts down participation in public forums by an order of magnitude or more. (Please send me real stats so we can check this wild speculation of mine.) In other words, in a newsgroup you might expect that about 10 out of a hundred readers would actively participate, contributing postings. And in a Web-based discussion involving registration, you might expect 10 out of hundred readers would register, and one out of those 10 would actually participate.
That could be a major drawback, because it is the content posted by active participants that makes such a discussion area interesting and attractive. So while readership (visitors) rather than participation might be your criterion of success,low participation -- due in part to the registration process -- would lead to low readership.
2) Priming the Pump
In any case, regardless of whether registration is enabled, content draws visitors. Ideally, the visitors themselves provide the content that draws other visitors, and your discussion area grows like crazy, with very little need for intervention on the part of the Web site manager. But a Web-based forum, even on a very hot topic can resemble a junior high school dance -- with lots of people lined up on the sidelines and no one willing to be the first one to go out onto the dance floor.
So how do you get the discussion started? How do you prime the pump?
Once again, we need data and anecdotal accounts from sites that have tried to start discussions. How much material do you have to provide yourself to begin with in order to attract an audience and get them talking to one another? How many people do you have to handpick and request or even pay to participate to get some interesting, informative, and provocative dialogue going?
3) Moderators
Popular newsgroups typically have thousands of readers and hundreds of participants. If someone grossly misbehaves, polluting the newsgroup environment or even threatening the viability the newsgroup, the reaction of the loyal participants is swift and pointed.
Web-based discussion areas, particularly those with registration, are not likely to have that many participants, hence it is less likely that self-policing will work. And hence the manager of the Web site would probably be well-advised to assign one or more moderators, to keep an eye on the postings, to encourage the participants to keep the discussion on topic, to periodically rearrange postings and threads putting like material together and making it easier for readers to find what they are interested in, to remove postings that might create legal problems, and to exclude participants who flagrantly misbehave and disrupt the discussion environment.
Once again, we need data. What is the typical time-investment needed by a moderator to keep tabs on a Web-based discussion with X new postings per day?
4) Facilitators
In some applications -- especially distance education/training -- the percentage of participation rather than the raw numbers of readers and participants could be a key factor in determining success, (like school fund-raising campaigns that state their goals in terms of percent of participation).
In these cases, perhaps a facilitator would be of value. Just as a trained professional can make a brainstorming meeting more effective, by structuring the discussion and drawing everyone in, someone with the right on-line skills might be able to raise participation from 10% of the registrants to 80, 90 or even 100%. Such a person could/should be able to diagnose factors which could dampen participation -- including cultural, social, and language barriers -- and then take action to overcome them.
You couldn't expect the teacher of a course -- the content expert -- to have these special on-line interpersonal skills. Rather this could be a whole new role/career.
5) Incentives
Part of the problem faced today by pioneering Web sites is probably due to the fact that would-be participants are unfamiliar with the medium. It took a while for notes and newsgroups to take off. Even folks familiar with those other on-line forms of discussion may be reluctant to try this new mode. Some incentive might be necessary to get people to try it and get used to it.
PCs come with games like solitaire, which help new users get accustomed to the mouse and other characteristics of the machine and its software. Perhaps Web-based discussion software should come with such an icebreaker.
Or perhaps Web site managers could and should include incentives when they open new discussion areas -- perhaps offering prizes for the most postings or the best postings or the postings that generate the most replies or longest threads.
What have you tried? What were the results?
6) Capabilities and Limitations
How difficult is the software to learn and to use? Do you need to provide on-line instructions? Or an interactive sample discussion for simple on-line training? Or a test area where people can test out the mechanism for posting and replying, without the risk of making fools of themselves, which they might fear in the main discussion area?
Is the application integrated with email, so people can participate in this new medium by means of an old familiar application?
In other words, is there a tie-in to LISTSERV (automated mailing list) software? And can participants elect to get email tickler messages when someone responds to a posting of theirs?
Keep in mind that this kind of software is still in its infancy. The characteristics I'm mentioning here are a wish list, not a product description. (My personal favorite is Workgroup Web Forum from Digital Equipment, which you can try out at http://webforum.research.digital.com/ or at http://www.fosters.com/ )
If you have tried Web-based discussion as a user or as a site manager, please send us email to share your experiences and insights into what works and what doesn't and what more is needed in the next round of software development.
Let's share with one another what we've learned and work together to help point the developers in the right direction.Each fall, people involved in distance learning around the world connect with one another on Global Learn Day to share their progress and discuss recent challenges. John Hibbs of the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Learning (www.bfranklin.edu) and his team reach a broad worldwide audience by using multiple diverse means to deliver this event—Web, text chat, voice over IP, telephone, and even radio. For instance, for delivery in countries such as India, the Web-based streaming audio signal is picked up and broadcast by traditional radio stations to reach a much wider audience.
Rather than leasing satellite time or paying for access to an existing worldwide network, the Global Learn Day team sets up an ad hoc, volunteer-based network which is "multi-media" in the true sense of the term: meaning not just voice and video, but rather many different modes of communication. Their efforts are a prototype for delivering educational events to large worldwide audiences. The team takes advantage of free and low-cost media to facilitate discussion, thereby moving beyond the corporate-dominated world of traditional mass communication.
Similarly, many businesses (but surprisingly few schools) deliver training by telephone conference calls known as "teleseminars." They use the Internet as a supplement—a way to deliver related materials, give participants a way to ask questions or comment, and offer follow-up discussions. Some of these teleseminars are really marketing events—a way to get people to sign up for expensive face-to-face events by giving them a foretaste of the content the scheduled speakers have to offer. In other cases, the teleseminar is the main delivery mechanism for a paid series of lessons.
In other words, simple applications, like email and instant messaging, used in coordination with an ordinary telephone concall, can produce very interesting results.
If you run a school or an e-learning business,
you may want to encourage your customers to interact with one
another as part of a community. Or you may want to showcase your
teaching staff, giving potential students a foretaste of classes
they might want to enroll in. For those purposes and also for
online delivery of actual courses, you may be tempted to use
full-blown educational platforms, with real-time video and
audio, PowerPoint presentations, etc. But it's quite possible
that simple text chat will serve just as well at far less cost
and with far less hassle.
But it's quite possible that simple text chat
will serve just as well at far less cost and with far less
hassle. Or you can combine text chat with some awesome
pics and use Animoto for school videos for a solution that can
cut costs while still be visually stimulating.
Under the umbrella of "Business on the Web," I've held regular chat sessions for nearly seven years (on Thursdays, from noon to 1 PM Eastern Time). I schedule volunteer experts with interesting topics, and I act as host. If few people show up for the live chat session, the discussion takes the form of an interview. If half a dozen or more active participants show up, then the discussion can go in valuable and unexpected directions. Sometimes the best contributions come from the experienced and knowledgeable audience rather than the expert. In either case, the transcript then serves as raw material from which to generate interesting content for a Web site or a newsletter. And I do all this using plain old text chat—no fancy platform with video and audio. The same approach would work just as well with your teaching staff as guests, using chat to market your school and courses. And those marketing chat sessions would also be an opportunity to wake your staff up to the potential of text chat as an instructional tool.
Often our habits lead us to seek high-tech,
high-priced automated solutions to our business problems, and we
lament the fact that budget constraints prevent us from doing
all that we wish. But the most important barrier we face isn't a
limited budget, but a limited imagination. We need to focus on
our objectives, rather than getting too enamored of the flashy
high-tech e-means that tempt us. We need the open-mindedness,
the humility, and the courage to seriously consider the bare
bones, labor-intensive approaches to education.
We might have expected that Internet technology would enable the transformation of traditional education. As teaching at a distance became practical and cost-effective, it would have been natural for universities to consider online teaching activities as "consulting", to allow their own professors to teach at institutions other than their "home" university, and to seek out the best and brightest from everywhere in the world to bolster their "virtual" faculty. In that ideal environment, we might have expected that universities to go out of their way to attract "brand name" professors who prefer to operate without a "home" university, teaching online for multiple institutions, and who are so good and so well-known that the best students seek them out.
Instead, today universities often interpret contractual terms literally and inflexibly in this new environment that wasn't forseen when the rules were written, and even add strict new terms aimed at online teaching and related intellectual property.
The conflict of Arthur Miller with the Harvard Law School is typical of the attempts of universities to interpret old contractual terms in new ways. Well-known in the areas of court procedure, copyright, and unfair competition, Professor Miller has been with the Harvard Law School since 1971. Over the years, he has, in accord with the University's contract provisions, done consulting and made TV appearances on the side. He even served as legal editor of ABC's "Good Morning America." Such activities helped to enhance his prestige both nationally and within the university. And he kept them within the contractual limit of 20% of his professional time.
Then during one summer vacation, he videotaped a series of lectures for an online university -- the Concord University School of Law, which is backed by backed by the Washington Post Company's Kaplan Educational Centers. Concord posted these lectures online and integrated them into their course offerings, with their regular faculty leading discussions and in other ways interacting with students. Professor Miller's contribution was just the taping of the lectures, and lending his reputation to the online venture as a "supplementary" lecturer. Apparently, the administration of the Harvard Law School objected that this kind of activity constituted a "conflict of interest" that put his tenure at risk. Miller, with his legal expertise, has so far been able to defend his position well. But others faced with a similar challenge might well back down to administrative intimidation.
Suffolk University in Boston is typical of
institutions imposing new rules on faculty for online
instruction. Suffolk's main offerings, with lots of night
courses, cater to the needs of students who go to school while
working fulltime. So moving to online teaching would seem to be
a natural evolution, and an important supplement to their
traditional business. But instead, the administration has
imposed new rules by which when a professor agrees to teach for
Suffolk online, all the materials written by that professor that
are posted online for that course become the intellectual
property of the university. That effectively prevents the
professor from teaching the same course online for multiple
schools. It also means that many people who in the past served
as adjunct faculty, bringing with them a wealth of practical
work experience in industry and business, would not even
consider working for them in their online program. And,
ironically, it means that people the school sought out as
potential teachers because of their published books can't teach
for them because the school's teaching contract conflicts with
their publishing contracts.
For such universities, the glass is half
empty, instead of half full -- they are frightened of the
competitive dangers of the new online educational environment
posed by schools, rather than enthused about the new
opportunities.
One of the most successful of the newcomers, the University of Phoenix, founded in 1976 and accredited since 1978, now boasts over 125,000 students from 117 campuses, including their online campus. They offer bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in such fields as business, technology, management, education, nursing, counseling, and criminal justice. Their faculty "is composed of accomplished working professionals with advanced degrees in their respective fields," teaching "at night what they do during the day." The flexibility of the U. of Phoenix contractual terms allows their faculty to teach and work elsewhere, which means they can recruit excellent people with unique experience and credentials.
Over time, market forces will probably force traditional universities to give their faculty far greater flexibility than today. But why wait for competitive economic pain to reach critical levels before making the necessary changes? Why not take advantage of new opportunities immediately -- creatively reinventing education for the benefit all today?
If we could move beyond traditional views of
the role and limitations of the teacher, "educational
outsourcing" would be possible. Professors as well as
departments could mix and match to build/enhance online courses:
focus on what they do best and "outsource" the rest. And at the
same time, colleges could offer the online services of their
faculty to other institutions, with prices determined by demand,
which depends on reputation. Then cross-institutional online
teaching could become a source of additional revenue for the
faculty's home institution as well as for the teachers. And
cross-institutional teaching work could help build the national
and global reputations of professors and of the schools they
work for.