Educational Technology/Distance Education

Executive Summary

Summary of Findings

Recommendations

1. A "Division of Educational Technology Implementation and Support" (DETIS) should be established to integrate, consolidate and coordinate the effective use and growth of educational technologies and distance education programs. The primary reasons for creating DETIS are to:
   1. Provide a clearly defined administrative unit to enable and enhance the growth and application of these technologies as well as to provide faculty in all units with access to these approaches.
   2. Reduce redundancies in the University's current administrative structure, in which support for educational technology and distance education is a function of several central administrative units (Academic Outreach, the Information Technology Division, the University Libraries, the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, the Media Union, and consortia formed among these and other units.)
   3. Provide a framework in which institutional resources can be leveraged to attract support from outside sources (foundations, government, industry).
      
      
2. Responsibility for developing institutional policies and for coordinating the administrative units that support educational technology should be consolidated under a single individual who reports to the Provost.
   1. One of the initial duties of this individual should be to recommend an administrative structure that will:
      1. minimize the existing cross-unit redundancy;
      2. create a single point of contact forunits/faculty members interested in utilizing educational technology/distance education;
      3. provide for centralized evaluation of available educational technologies; and
      4. support on a University-wide basis those educational technologies that are proven to be most useful.
   2. This individual should have the authority to function as a referee in the coordination of educational technology services and support provided by central administrative units.
   3. There should be a strong commitment to University-wide dissemination of information regarding the mission and functions of DETIS.
      
      
3. Each school/college should:
   1. Assess its specific needs for further development and implementation of educational technology/distance education;
   2. Cooperate with DETIS through a designated, unit support person(s) to address these needs; and
   3. Adopt policies to encourage and enable faculty participation in educational technology/distance education activities. While acknowledging that this joint mission has long been based on face-to-face interaction, the Task Force believes that traditional teaching methods can be substantially enhanced by the addition of media-rich, asynchronous, computer-based environments. Such environments can be used to create learning communities of scholars and students that extend well beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom. While the Task Force believes that the proper role for instructional technology in higher education is as a tool for improvement, not as an aim in itself, there is substantial risk of compromising the quality of the institution in the long term, if we ignore the opportunities provided by these new educational tools.

Conclusions

The desired impact of these recommendations is to improve and enrich current teaching standards and methods for educating on-campus students as well as to allow units to reach out to identified constituencies located off-campus. These goals are mutually supportive in that they are both enabled by information technologies. The funding, development, and effective use of distance technologies in the on-campus setting will lead to our ability, should it prove desirable, to evolve a growing complement of distance education programs in the longer term.

Introduction

• Growing student expectations of a learning process that incorporates modern computing and telecomunication technologies;
• Substantial incorporation of computing and telecommunication technology into educational practices to provide interactive course content to students physically located at a distance from the teacher and from each other, with distances ranging from on-campus to worldwide;
• Calls from both faculty and students for more flexible and responsive curriculum/course design and implementation;
• Increasing demand, and in some cases an economic imperative, for life-long learning;
• Complaints of increased faculty work load, partially related to the time required to incorporate technology-based teaching approaches;
• Demands that promotion/tenure evaluations include the creativity associated with, and time required for, the development and delivery of technology-enhanced courses.

Several states have recently begun to broker course delivery to a wider audience by coordinating the extension services and corporate training programs of their member universities. Examples include: 1) The California Virtual University, offering degree programs compiled from courses offered by the state's public universities; 2) The Western Governors University, concentrating on competency-based courses; and 3) The Pennsylvania Virtual University, an alliance of regional campuses offering undergraduate and graduate credit web-based courses. The University of Michigan is currently involved, although only in a limited way, in two virtual university ventures: 1) The State of Michigan Virtual University, including its originating college, Michigan Virtual Auto University, which aims at workplace training and retraining for major industries in the state, and 2) The CIC Common Market of Courses and Institutes, which attempts to provide students at the Big Ten Universities and the University of Chicago with on-line access to courses taught at any of its member institutions.

As the Task Force considered to what extent the University of Michigan should participate in the development and delivery of distance education and educational technologies, it remained cognizant of what it means to be a great public research university with special roles and responsibilities. The core educational value of the University of Michigan is to be a leader in the production of intellectual content and to deliver education of outstanding quality. In this respect, the University of Michigan does not compete with the new on-line, virtual campuses. However, to accomplish its mission the University must recognize the increasing need, and indeed the obligation, to participate in the information revolution and to incorporate new digital technologies into the curriculum, whether delivered in the context of a traditional classroom or to remote locations. The justification for this conclusion is that traditional teaching methods can be enhanced by the addition of media-rich, asynchronous, computer-based environments which can be used to create learning communities of scholars and students that extend beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom.

Definitions: Educational Technologies and Distance Education

Computer-based technologies that substantially enhance the processing, storage, and use of data are expanding at an accelerating rate. This information revolution has the potential to have an enormous and immediate impact on higher education. The demands for educational reform are felt most strongly and most immediately by professional schools, which are striving to move forward to provide increased opportunities for working professionals to have access to University courses delivered remotely. To take advantage of these technologies, large investments are needed in the infrastructure required to support computers and telecommunication links in the classroom. Faculty members are struggling to learn new technologies and incorporate them into their teaching. Students are demanding digital access to lecture notes and course materials as well as on-line office hours and discussion groups. These educational technologies, which are increasingly required to support the educational programs delivered on-campus to our traditional students, are also enabling the expansion of distance education activities.

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), the national board which oversees and coordinates accreditation policies, has recently recognized the need to develop consensus regarding metrics and procedures for assuring quality in distance learning. They have recognized that the "market" for this aspect of higher education is tumultuous, growing rapidly, of uneven quality, and ahead of the accrediting curve. In April, 1998, the Institute for Higher Education Policy issued a report entitled Assuring Quality in Distance Learning. The North Central Association (NCA), which accredits the University of Michigan, is in the process of considering a new set of distance-learning guidelines. According to their definition:

"Distance education is defined, for the purposes of accreditation review, as a formal educational process in which the majority of the instruction occurs when student and instructor are not in the same place. Instruction may be synchronous or asynchronous. Distance education may employ correspondence study, or audio, video, or computer technologies."

A description and analysis of the use of educational technology to supplement traditional classroom instruction is included in Appendix C . An analysis of distance education and the changing educational process is included in Appendix D .

The Educational Technology/Distance Education Task Force

The University of Michigan's approach to the development and support of educational technologies and distance education has to date been decentralized and non-systematic. A number of central administrative units have been involved in these activities, notably the Information Technology Division (ITD), the University Libraries, Academic Outreach (AO), and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). Individual schools and colleges have also been engaged to a greater or lesser extent in the development of technology-enhanced courses and curricula for on-campus or off-campus students as well as in the attendant need for faculty training and support. Some of the most successful of these projects have involved ad hoc collaborations between schools and one or more central units. However, the importance of these new instructional tools and the opportunities they offer for enhancement of educational activities make it imperative that we adopt a thoughtful, deliberative approach to the development of institutional policies and mechanisms to support both learning technologies and distance education.

Task Force Charge

In the spring of 1998, Provost Cantor formed a task force to examine:

1. the wide range of activities related to distance or asynchronous learning;
2. the achievement of effective and creative uses of technology in educational activities; and
3. the delivery of courses outside the normal format and/or to non-traditional populations (e.g., alumni, industry, community groups).

Task Force Membership

Deans, directors of academic units, and department chairs were asked to nominate potential participants. Fifty-two names were received, and a working committee of 16 (Appendix A) was selected by the Provost. The working committee was staffed by a graduate student in the School of Education.

Task Force Processes and Activities

Task Force meetings were held approximately bi-weekly from May to December, 1998, except for the month of August. The committee also communicated by means of email and an on-line conferencing tool, WebBoard. Input was solicited in the following ways:

1. A survey (Appendix E) was sent to 74 persons (Appendix F), including those on the original list of nominees and representatives from the faculty and administration of each school and college. Twenty-three detailed responses were received.
2. Student input was solicited through a focus group held on November 5, 1998, and attended by five undergraduate students.
3. The Task Force invited William Gosling, Director of the University Libraries; Barbara O'Keefe, Director of the Media Union; and John Godfrey, Special Assistant to the Provost (with responsibility to prepare for the next University of Michigan accreditation visit) to speak (at three separate meetings) about their areas of responsibility with respect to educational technology and distance education. One additional meeting was spent touring the Media Union facilities.

Major Findings: Status of Educational Technology and Distance Education at the University of Michigan

The University consists of a set of highly independent academic units (schools/colleges and related units), each pursuing the educational, research, and service mandates unique to its disciplines and its students/clientele. In an attempt to gain a broader appreciation for the diversity of educational missions among the schools/colleges and related units, the committee collected responses to several questions (abbreviated below, see Appendix E for complete text) that were sent to the designated survey group (see list of recipients in Appendix F). Selected survey responses, illustrating the diversity of attitudes and approaches in the various academic units, are included in Appendix G . A listing of ongoing distance education activities at the University of Michigan can be found on the Surveyor website managed by the Academic Outreach Program.

Abbreviated survey questions

• Identify the key groups/individuals who are targets for educational programs in your unit.
• Describe your unit's involvement in delivering instruction to individuals off-campus.
• What facilitates or encourages your unit to engage in distance education?
• How central is distance education to the mission of your unit?
• What kind of support is needed for educational technology and/or to successfully launch a distance education course/program?
• What is the impact of distance education on your unit?
• What difficulties or concerns or opportunities do you see?
• What is the impact on you/your unit of educational technology and the new digital tools for delivery of educational material?

1. Professional schools are all either involved in or interested in developing courses/programs for delivery to off-campus students, especially to working professionals.
   • Efforts in the professional schools are supported primarily by resources within the unit, small grants from foundations, tuition revenue, and corporate-sponsorship of graduate education.
   • Some University of Michigan professional schools feel increasingly stiff competition from peer institutions that have begun to move aggressively into distance education (e.g., for Engineering, it is Stanford, Purdue, Georgia Tech, MIT, Columbia). The professional schools are often reacting to undeniable pressures from the marketplace.
   • Most University of Michigan programs that deliver off-campus instruction include some face-to-face sessions between students and instructors (e.g., Nursing Administration, Global MBA). The Task Force views the addition of face-to-face sessions as an important component of distance education.
   • The Business School's Global MBA uses telecommunication technology as a supplement and communication mechanism for approximately 25% of the instruction delivered.
   • The College of Engineering's Center for Professional Development, established in 1996, consolidated off-campus graduate instruction with non-credit professional development in one unit.
   • The Medical School's Office of Continuing Medical Education provides to community physicians both 'live' and distance-independent activities, most of which are underwritten by pharmaceutical companies and fees, and are self-supporting.
   • The School of Nursing has used interactive video to deliver programs to Nursing Completion students in Traverse City, and this fall launched a new MSA program which utilizes distance education techniques.
   • The School of Public Health has had for twenty years an On Job-On Campus program, and the School of Social Work has provided selected distance courses for several years.
     
     
2. The College of Literature, Science & the Arts faculty are focused exclusively, or nearly so, on educating on-campus students.
   • The campus experience is viewed as critical for undergraduate students, and potentially important for other groups, too.
   • Some faculty are concerned about the effectiveness of distance education, believing that there is no substitute for human contact and inter-personal interactions. However, others believe that the use of email has the advantage of bringing the instructor into direct contact with individual students, which provides the means to establish a closer relationship than is possible in the lecture format.
   • Course Web-sites often make use of links to take advantage of information already available on-line, thus obviating the need to recreate some course materials.
   • Several individual faculty within LS&A are involved in the development of and instruction with extremely creative educational technology projects.
     
     
3. New methods in educational technology provide the opportunity to change in fundamental ways the structure and content of courses.
   • Exponential growth in use of these digital technologies is expected, as these new tools are proven effective for teaching and become easier for instructors to use.
   • Untapped opportunities exist for leveraging additional tuition revenue in schools/colleges by providing non-traditional students (e.g., guest students enrolled at other institutions, alumni, working professionals) with access to high-quality instruction provided by University of Michigan courses offered on-line.
   • Assessment tools are needed to monitor the learning process with new technology and to ensure that quality is maintained.
     
     
4. Current resources available to units, including faculty time as well as financial support, are fully committed to the delivery of on-going instructional needs.
   • Time and funds are not seen to be generally available for the development of new educational tools. Incentives, reward structure, and release time are needed to encourage faculty involvement.
   • Some units/some faculty have strong interests in incorporating computer-based technologies into existing courses or in developing courses to be delivered at a distance, but lack expertise and experience.
   • Individual faculty are not receiving the support they need to take full advantage of the opportunities for educational improvement offered by instructional technology. Assistance from instructional-technology consultants or designers with skills and experience that bridge academics and computing is often needed. This can be quite costly and an impediment to faculty who are not on external grants.
   • Economies of scale can be realized by consolidating within a centralized unit functions and services that are common to all schools/colleges. Individual schools/colleges should not be forced to reinvent best practices and to duplicate software and infrastructure.
     
     
5. Distance education technology enhances the University's outreach relationships with various constituencies, including industry, government, alumni and the community, and presents an opportunity to enrich the Michigan educational experience.
   • Adult or life-long learning, educational pipeline programs for K-12, and cultural activities are all potential beneficiaries of this technology.
   • The Exhibit Museum has a Web-site that functions as a pre-visit introduction to the Museum's collections.
   • The Alumni Center has offered to partner with Pharmacy to develop programs for their alumni.
   • Educational programming is offered on WFUM-TV (now the University of Michigan Public Broadcasting) by their Center for Educational Telecommunications. They note that the federally mandated conversion of all television stations to digital technology will transform television to an information distribution system.
   • The participation of working professionals in the educational programs of the University provides an opportunity to enrich the learning experience in ways that are impossible in the traditional classroom environment.
     
     
6. Students in a distance educational environment may behave more like consumers in how they select courses and what they expect.
   • University of Michigan students will likely be attracted to courses offered on-line by other institutions as these become increasingly available. The University may be faced with an increased demand to transfer in credits earned through distance education courses taken elsewhere, which would have a potentially negative impact on tuition revenue.
   • Complex, interpersonal, psychological factors affect students' responses to learning in a distance education environment. For example, some women students in science/engineering felt that the anonymity of an on-line chat room might diminish gender-related concerns. Other comments suggested an inverse relationship between pre-knowledge and familiarity with a subject and its desirability/suitability for delivery in a distance education format.

Administrative barriers impeding further development and improvement of educational technologies and distance education at the University of Michigan.

1. The Task Force finds that a persistent lack of central coordination and administrative oversight has resulted in frustration and confusion about where faculty and units should turn for institutional assistance and advice. There is not a lack of interest or activity in this area at the University of Michigan, but rather too many central administrative units are involved. The list of providers of educational technology and distance educational support services at the University of Michigan is given in Appendix H , from the Faculty Handbook, section 20.5 Technology Facilities and Programs . Note that the list includes 9 independent entities, some of which are collaborative programs, with others being established offices. These administrative entities apparently have evolved overlapping functions and missions.
   
   
2. The Task Force recommends that the University of Michigan articulate an overall institutional policy on educational technology/distance education in order to accomplish its objectives and to preserve its core values.

1. Improve current teaching standards and methods for educating on-campus students.
   
   
2. Reach out to identified constituencies off-campus.

Recommendations

1. Establish a "Division of Educational Technology Implementation and Support" (DETIS), based on a set of identified, shared needs. The following set of functions should be incorporated into this unit.
   1. DETIS as an advisory resource.
      • Provide a central pool of instructional, technical, and educational experts serving as advisors to the faculty/staff of the school originating the project.
      • Establish a forum for interested units to suggest direction for DETIS and to share information and best practices.
      • Serve a clearinghouse function for the collection and dissemination of best practices.
      • Advise units on marketing and publicity.
      • Be the repository of policies and procedures related to development and production of computer-based instructional materials.
        
        
   2. DETIS as a provider of educational technology training and support.
      • Oversee the: i) training and technical support for educational technology technicians who reside locally in the units, and who can direct on-site assistance to handle logistics and technical needs, and ii) instructional training for faculty and students, which would be delivered at multiple sites.
      • Provide educational technology service staff who can directly assist faculty and units with course design and implementation.
      • Encourage, with grant competitions or other funding mechanisms, initiatives that allow units to collaborate, to share, and to build research projects and linkages through creative partnerships within or outside the University. The obvious areas of opportunity include evaluation of distance learning, exploration of new educational tools, services and collaborations, building effective shared learning spaces and measuring their impact.
        
        
   3. DETIS as a resource for software and multimedia production facilities.
      • Provide a standard package of educational technology tools/software that is centrally supported. The infrastructure cannot be completely comprehensive, and choices need to be made based on unit-shared needs.
      • Provide individual schools/colleges/other interested academic units (e.g., museums, libraries, etc.) with basic platforms upon which they can build to suit their specific needs.
        
        
   4. DETIS as a leader and an innovator.
      • Provide leadership for campus-directed efforts such as video-conferencing, wiring classrooms, and other infrastructure issues.
      • Provide leadership and direction for improvement of teaching by the use of external resources (satellite courses, UMTV/Cable, bringing in experts in virtual education technology, etc.) and through the development of new technological tools.
      • Develop enabling academic policies for the delivery of distance independent programs, including policies governing 'virtual presence' (i.e., residency) and participation in a network-based learning community.
      • Leverage University contributions and central resources allocated to support educational technologies and distance education, to attract support from outside sources (foundations, government, industry).
        
        
   5. DETIS as a coordinating unit to focus and integrate current activities in this area by interacting with:
      • ITD for technical support and maintenance of the required infrastructure;
      • the University Library for the provision of digital resources;
      • CRLT to ensure pedagogical quality and outcome evaluation; and
      • Technology Management Office (TMO) on intellectual property issues and media rights related to the production and use of educational materials.
        
        
2. Responsibility for developing institutional policies and for coordinating the administrative units that support educational technology and distance education should be consolidated under the leadership of a single individual, the Director of DETIS, who reports to the Provost.
   1. One of the initial duties of the Director of DETIS should be to recommend an administrative structure that will:
      • minimize the existing cross-unit redundancy;
      • create a single point of contact for units/faculty members interested in utilizing educational technology/distance education;
      • provide for centralized evaluation of available educational technologies; and
      • support on a University-wide basis those educational technologies that are proven to be most useful.
        
        
   2. The Director of DETIS should serve the role of a 'referee', to coordinate the activities of the various units providing services required for the development and delivery of educational technology and distance learning.
      
      
   3. There should be a strong commitment to University-wide dissemination of information regarding the mission and functions of DETIS.
      
      
3. Schools and colleges should:
   1. Assess their mission and objectives and then articulate specific policies related to educational technology/distance education;
      
      
   2. Cooperate with DETIS through a designated unit support person(s) to achieve their needs;
      
      
   3. Develop incentive programs and enabling mechanisms to encourage faculty participation in educational technology/distance education.

Appendices

Appendix A: Task Force Membership
Appendix B: Announcement of Task Force
Appendix C: Appending Asynchronous Technology to Traditional Teaching
Appendix D: A Model of the Changing Education Process
Appendix E: Unit Survey Instrument
Appendix F: Survey Recipients
Appendix G: Selected Survey Responses
Appendix H: Central Unit Support