Transforming Vision into Practice:
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Vivian Rossner-Merrill
VOL. 11, No. 2, 121-125
In his article, Destination 2000: Strategies for Managing Successful Distance Education Programs, Olcott asserts that successful education institutions of the 21st century will operate under very different conditions from those now in place. In the next century, the primary impetus driving education will be the need to accommodate the demands of the market-driven economy. Priorities for program planning and curriculum development will be pragmatically determined by clients seeking specific competencies rather than accredited university degrees. Student-driven “education-on-demand” is to become the status quo, and institutions designed to meet this need will thrive; those who do not will fail as other education agencies will rise to fill the gap.
Under these circumstances, the very survival of traditional education institutions will require them to become highly competitive. According to Olcott, “higher education institutions must learn to function more like a business and provide responsive, timely, and cost effective programs in the home, the workplace, and the traditional classroom” (p. 103). Most importantly, he sees distance education taking a prominent and directive role in the process of change.
There is a recent surge in popularity of the market-driven “education-on- demand” vision of higher education (see, for example, Denning, 1996; Hairston, 1996; Hamalinen, Whinston, & Vishik, 1996; Heterick & Sanders, 1993). A common theme among proponents of this view is that higher education as we know it must make dramatic changes to accommodate the transformative power of new technologies on education or fail to survive- a view that I believe borders on a technological determinism that obscures the reality of the very situation it purports to serve, or save, as the case may be. The basic premise of this school of thought is, however, a sound one. Put a little less dramatically, using multimedia and interactive technologies in instruction, learning, and related educational practices will require that changes be made to traditional ways of doing things. Whether or not these changes will be spearheaded by distance educators remains to be seen, as their role in the change process may be just as much predicated upon the position and placement of distance education and distance educators within a given institution as it is on their expertise and experience in the field.
If one were to ask, as Olcott does, why learning by distance education is not considered comparable to traditional learning despite evidence to the contrary, or why distance education continues to exist on the margins of mainstream activities, or how distance education can take a leadership role in the change process, then finding the answers and hence a new vision for distance education must realistically begin with the nature of the place and role of distance education within a given institution. Olcott has overlooked a potentially far more powerful avenue to change than suggesting ways to reinvent faculty as distance educators. That is to use the familiar structures, processes, and procedures already in place for academic units to create a distance education unit among them, one that includes the resources typically associated with distance education support services. This would provide opportunities to advocate for change in ways that do not currently exist for many distance educators. Most importantly, this vision does not require inventing multifaceted dual roles for faculty already overloaded with responsibilities for their own scholarly areas.
A first step toward implementing change requires making a realistic appraisal of conditions as they are. In light of this, Olcott’s own assessment of distance education practices is helpful in that it takes us right into the heart of the institution itself. This is where we find the current reality of the place and practices of distance education in those traditional institutions he criticizes. In this response I have not taken on the task of arguing whether or not Olcott’s vision and the recommendations he proposes are realistic ones for traditional institutions of higher learning. I’ve done that elsewhere (Rossner-Merrill, in press). What I propose to do instead is to show that some fundamental changes must first take place for distance educators before any changes can be undertaken by distance educators. I will first take a closer look at the position of distance education in college or university settings and then speculate on whether Olcott’s proposed strategies could truly take distance education forward, although not necessarily in the way he would like to see it done.
Olcott claims that for technology to realize its promise, boundaries of “turf and traditional service regions” need to be dissolved along with the pervasive “parochial self-interest” currently embedded in educational institutions. This is where distance education is to provide a leadership role. For Olcott, those assuming the directive role will be faculty, reconstituted as distance educators, who will work hand in hand with senior administrators to refine the institution in ways that support the distance venture as he sees it. The problem is that Olcott confuses two realities: that of faculty and that of distance education. Although there is little ambiguity in understanding what faculty members do and how they go about doing it, what constitutes the position, place, and role of the distance educator within institutions is not consistent from one institution to the next. This has deleterious effects on the perceived efficacy of learning at a distance and on the acceptance of distance education as a viable academic unit in its own right.
Olcott refers to “both campus and distance instruction” and “distance education organizational structures that currently exist on most campuses,” which suggests some awareness of where distance education functions within the institution but not a full appreciation of the variability of the enterprise. First, within many education institutions “distance education” constitutes the practices and procedures of those centres that are typically part of the collection of service units found in traditional universities or colleges. In this case, the distance educator is a service provider for faculty, although some may be located within academic faculties or departments. In these centres and departments some distance educators are faculty members and some are not depending upon the institution in question. Some may engage in teaching and research while others provide support services only; some may do both, with or without faculty status.
If the primary role of the distance educator is to provide a comprehensive service to mainstream faculty who elect to take on some distance teaching, then it is unlikely that the influence of the distance service provider will extend much beyond that of a consultative and supportive nature. Under these circumstances, faculty who teach via distance education are not mandated to do so, but those who do are in a position to determine the distance program’s focus, content, and instructional design features. Thus, the locus of control resides with faculty and the academic units to which they belong, not with the distance educator. Typically, incentive and compensatory packages for faculty are part of the service and support offered by the distance education unit involved. In this way, distance education is wholly constrained by academic units that are not identified with distance education per se. Views on change and the change process are also determined by those same constraints. A tendency toward conservatism may or may not prevail depending upon the dispositions toward the impact of technology of faculty involved.
Second, faculty rarely see themselves as distance educators even when they are engaged in the process and well supported for doing so. Their identification is disciplinary in focus, and distance education is not typically perceived to be a viable discipline. Rather, it is more likely to be seen to comprise modes of delivery requiring adjustments in pedagogy to suit the medium. Perceived this way, few faculty would find becoming distance educators in the way Olcott proposes an attractive option. The increased responsibilities he puts forward are more likely to be viewed as intrusive and unworkable given the normal expectations for teaching, research, and community service expected as a matter of course. On the other hand, distance educators who are themselves faculty comprising distance education as a viable discipline are well positioned to provide leadership for change. The point to be made is that the current placement and role of distance educators within the institution have some bearing on the way distance education is perceived, both by faculty and administrators. What that place and role is has great bearing upon the perceived credibility of the distance educator to act as an effective change agent. Fully understanding the implications of this situation requires adopting a more realistic platform for change than that taken by Olcott.
Given that distance education is typically embedded within the institution, it might make more sense first to work toward according it the normative status of an academic discipline in institutions of higher education in general. Once standardized in this way, distance educators are much better positioned to work collaboratively for change within and across institutions.
If distance educators are designated as faculty within their own discipline, then they enjoy membership in a group clearly identified with the institution’s mainstream activities. These activities comprise curriculum development, teaching and research, all facets of program development, specialized teaching by discipline, and conducting research needed to advance the discipline and to establish best educational practices for the discipline. In short, decisions, practices, and procedures associated with the field of distance education would then rest with the academic unit comprising distance educators. In this position, distance education will be recognizably a field of endeavour in its own right and distance educators would be well-placed to provide leadership for change. They are, for example, ideally positioned to keep current with distance education research, teaching practices, and multimedia, online, and Web-based modes for instruction, to educate and train those wishing to specialize in distance education streams, including other faculty; to have access to resources to further research in the field; and to be asked to serve on departmental, faculty, and senior administrative level committees and college or university task forces responsible for making decisions about the nature and direction of change for the institution. Clearly, the distance educator as faculty member is in a much better position to work for change than is the distance educator as service support agent. Unfortunately, the latter situation is too often prevalent where distance education is concerned.
Before anything else, we need to establish a uniform purpose for distance education within institutional settings and thereby take it onto a level playing field with other mainstream academic units. Making lists of potentially costly directives designed to remake faculty and the institution to serve a particular end, namely developing programs to accommodate market-driven “education-on-demand,” will only serve to alienate the very faculty needed to carry it out. It is naive in the extreme to expect that traditional education institutions will take seriously a vision put forward that threatens demise for those who do not share it. Not the least because Olcott’s vision for the 21st century ignores the fact that education institutions are already adapting technology to serve “for-profit” ends, and not at the expense of those areas of intrinsic educational worth whose value cannot be measured in fiscal terms. (For a preview of for-profit programs go to <http://www.forbes.com>http://www.forbes.com, type ’cyberschool’ under search, then click on “I got my degree by email.”) What is needed in many colleges and universities is not the remaking of faculty members into distance educators, but the reinvention of distance education itself. I am referring, of course, to establishing it as a viable field of scholarly endeavour where it is an academic unit in its own right, staffed by individuals who meet all of the requirements for placement in tenure-stream academic positions or its equivalent.
Vivian Rossner-Merrill
LohnLab for Online Teaching
Centre for Distance Education
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
Denning, P. J. (1996, November/December). Business designs for the new university. Educom Review, 30(6), 21-30.
Hairston, E. (1996, March/April). A picaresque journey: Corporate change, technological tidal waves, and webby worldviews. Change, pp. 32-47.
Hamalinen, M., Whinston, A., & Vishik, S. (1996). Electronic markets for learning: Education brokerage on the Internet. Communications of the ACM, 39(6), 51-58.
Heterick, R. C., Jr., & Sanders, W. H. (1993, September/October). From plutocracy to pluralism: Managing the emerging technostructure. Educom Review, pp. 22-28.
Rossner-Merrill, V. (in press). The red queen’s list of impossible things: Some reasons why universities should not bend to the demands of a market-driven economy. Journal of Public Service & Outreach.