CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN DISTANCE LEARNING
Rationale
Plan for the Center
Outline of Initial Program and Activities
Steve Kerr, Professor, College of Education
Bill Winn, Professor, College of Education
Distance learning has become increasingly popular in higher education, business and industrial training, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) in the public schools. Properly done, it can offer a number of advantages: access to education for people physi cally distant from a campus, asynchronous learning for those whose schedules do not permit them to attend regular classes, and opportunities to pursue degrees or obtain professional training that might otherwise not be available.
Together with these advantages come questions on the parts of many teachers, students, administrators, and public officials: What needs to be done to make distance learning as equivalent as possible to face-to-face education? How should materials be d esigned and made available in this sort of environment? What sorts of support do faculty need who venture to teach under these new conditions? And what are the costs of those additional support services, and how can they best be apportioned?
In addition to these practical issues, there are fears and concerns that are more visceral. These have to do with such things as faculty workload, ownership of materials produced, student satisfaction, the types of interaction encouraged by electronic environments, the quality of learning that results, and the overall impact of distance learning courses in the mix of educational experiences offered by the University.
What is proposed here is the establishment of a center, the Center for Research and Development in Distance Learning. The Center will serve the University of Washington, its faculty, students, and administration, by collecting and disseminating inform ation about "what works" in distance education, analyzing new approaches, supporting faculty via workshops and publications (including a web site), and demonstrating "best practices" through design and implementation of selected courses.
We make no claim that we have definitive answers to all of the questions and concerns noted above. There is a considerable literature about what "works" in design and implementation of distance learning programs at other institutions, and this literatu re offers some guidelines about how such efforts at the University of Washington might proceed. But there are also many distinctively local conditions, and we believe that if we are to do a good job as an institution, we must take these into account as w e move into this new area. The work of the Center proposed here will seek answers to the types of questions noted above, and it will also be guided by a number of fundamental premises, principles about the design and implementation of distance learning t hat we, the proposers and organizers, take to be central. These include:
 | Distance learning can produce results that are in many ways equivalent to those achieved from traditional, face-to-face instruction, but that this is most likely to happen when the instructional experiences are well designed and the medium used approp riately. |
| Not all types of instruction, or all disciplines, will use distance learning in the same way; there may be some students, teachers, fields, forms of teaching, and sorts of instructional outcomes for whom/which distance learning is ill-suited. |
| The student's experience in distance learning courses is fundamentally different from the experience of face-to-face instruction; one of the central requirements of good design for distance learning experiences is that those differences are recognized and, to the maximum extent possible, addressed. |
| The primary way that those differences can be addressed is through good design and compensation for the additional burdens that distance learning imposes; this is as true for those who teach distance learning courses as for those who take them. |
| Good design requires support at the time a teacher/professor prepares/revises materials for a course; things that are self-evident when a course is offered in person can become mysteries when a student tries to puzzle them out solo. Anticipating the potential problems and sources of misunderstanding is a key part of instructional design for distance learning. |
| Distance learning is typically not a "cheaper" way to offer instruction; if done appropriately, it is often more expensive than traditional, face-to-face instruction. Economies of scale are elusive and most often limited to a few very large courses u nder special conditions. Most courses, most of the time, will cost more to offer, even when offered multiple times; on-going support and revision costs are substantial. |
| Offering courses via distance learning raises a large set of legitimate concerns on the part of faculty about such issues as workload, intellectual property, recognition of design work as a part of tenure/promotion/merit decisions, expected levels of effort, available support for design and for student consultation during a course, special assessment and evaluation needs, and so on. All of these should be regarded by academic units as reasonable questions, and one to be addressed via action by releva nt faculty bodies at the level of the academic unit, as well as the University as a whole. |
While it is not the purpose of the Center to address directly these last questions, we start from a perspective that is informed by the principles noted above.
The Center for Research and Development in Distance Learning is a research and development center operated jointly under the auspices of University of Washington Educational Outreach and the College of Education at the University of Washington. In itial decisions about the operation of the Center will be made by the heads of each of those two organizations; as the Center develops, a more formal governance structure may be desirable to involve representatives of other units on the UW campus involved in distance learning . The Center should also be in close contact with such bodies as the Distance Learning Roundtable and the Ad Hoc Committee on Educational Technology and Distance Education, as well as other units that are relevant to the Center's mi ssion and purpose.
The primary purposes of the Center will include to: (1) Inventory activities and resources at University of Washington; (2) Identify other programs and resources regionally, nationally, and the internationally that may be interesting and relevant for t he development of distance learning at the University of Washington; (3) Organize and offer (with collaboration from other campus units, e.g., the College of Education) a Certificate Program in the Design and Development of Distance Education; (4) Conduct research and development in areas relevant to distance learning; (5) Plan special meetings, conferences, and seminars for the University of Washington relevant to distance learning.
Outline of Initial Program and Activities
The initial program and activities of the Center will include:
(1) Inventory of activities and resources in distance learning at the University of Washington . These activities will include:
- Create an inventory of people, projects, and other centers of activity at the University of Washington involved in the design and development of distance learning.
- Develop a web site describing and listing activities in distance learning at the University; the web site will also provide a link to other groups on campus concerned with the creation and use of distance learning.
- Maintain contacts with faculty interested in serving as consultants for the development of distance learning courses.
-Develop and circulate a guide for departments and academic units to use in discussing and making decisions about distance learning technologies and the role those might play in a department's curriculum and academic programs.
(2) Identification of other programs and resources. The Center will identify especially interesting and important programs and resources in distance learning on a regional, national, and international basis. It will highlight relevant w ork and bring it to the timely attention of other units on campus involved in the development of distance learning programs.
(3) Certificate Program in the Design and Development of Distance Education. The Center will serve as the developer and implementor for a proposed Certificate Program in Distance Education. That program will be intended for a broad audi ence of educators and corporate personnel involved with distance education. The courses, materials, and experiences offered by the Center will, to the greatest extent possible: (a) model best practice in the field of distance education (in terms o f instructional design, match of approaches to intended goals and outcomes, forms of interaction, type of assessment, etc.); (b) demonstrate the variety of approaches possible when designing for distance learners (e.g., "Hands on," "Study of," "Dis cussion Forums," and "Research Seminars.") Some initial development activity is proposed for the Summer of 1998 for the first three of these approaches, supported by student activity in the fourth -- see Attachment for details.
(4)Principal foci of the Center's research and development activity. The Center's work will be principally concentrated in the following five areas: (a) the design of model programs for distance learning, incorporating "best practice s" in information design ; (b) the study of the audience for distance learning programs, including their typical characteristics, needs, and factors to be borne in mind when designing for them (with special focus on adult and working professional l earners); (c) instructional development and design bearing in mind points (a) and (b) above; (d) planning and administration of distance learning programs, including recruitment, assessment, inter-institutional linkages, and cost-effectivene ss (development of a model for data collection and elements to be considered in assessing cost); (e) the study of essential elements of "electronic community," including the central elements of interpersonal interaction to be conserved (possibiliti es for electronic and mediated communication, characteristics of exchanges in different formats, their effectiveness, etc.)
(5) Development and planning of special meetings, conferences, and seminars. The Center will plan special meetings, conferences, and seminars at the University of Washington on the design, development, and implementation of distance lear ning programs. The first such conference will be planned for the Summer of 1999. Planning will include identification of a major figure in the field of distance learning, definition of the audience for such an event, development of publicity and information materials for the meeting, and linkage to on-going academic programs at the University of Washington and other educational institutions in the region. The conference will also be linked to work under way in the College of Education at the University of Washington.