Educational Technology/Distance Education

Appendix G

Selected Survey Responses

Please describe your unit's interest in, or current involvement in, delivering instruction (e.g. credit and/or non-credit/professional development) to individuals located off-campus, at a distance from Ann Arbor.

• At the present time, my unit has not expressed an interest in this, nor are we involved in this as a part of the major education program of our students. NOTE that we do use facilities such as on-line conferencing, videoconferencing, and phone conferencing to extend our classroom environment, especially to make connections to outside guest speakers.
• People who spent their time developing such courses—even if there were technical financial support—would risk being viewed as diluting the intellectual life/value of the college. Distance learning does not fit with standard definitions of teaching, nor does the preparation that it would require fit with standard definitions of scholarship. I think that unless there is a major change in the perception of the value of such endeavors (a change that would have to rival the change in perception that has occurred around the value of undergraduate teaching over the last fifteen years), they will remain at the margins.
• Strong interest! Currently a part of the Ameritech grant enabling the SOAD to provide information and product design counseling to small businesses in the State. We will apply existing and create new collaboration technologies to assist us as we work both in person and remotely with these companies. In time, and if successful, there is opportunity to replicate and expand this and other instructional/outreach activities.

• Not central...People are already spread too thin, and to start a new good-intention technology crusade to dump more dump more info into the huge and uncontrolled WWW might be ill advised.
• The notion of distance education as separate from on campus education underestimates the faculty's ability to adopt new ways of teaching using new tools. Realistically, this adoption will be slow in the early stages, especially in some areas, but it will grow exponentially as the tools are proven effective and become easier to use.

• We would need centralized services that would facilitate the production and delivery of those courses. Included in these services would have to be some way of dealing with the intellectual property issues that stand as a major block to the delivery of high quality distance education content.
• It is my strong belief that in order to provide equivalent education to distance students, a library component should be required. With our new abilities to provide remote access to databases, e-mail reference service and even chat reference service, the means are now in place to enable the library to be a full participant in this new form of education.
• A major support needed is preparation of faculty and support for them in how to be most effective in translating traditional offerings to new formats. Faculty need to gain skills in authoring courses and not being dependent on technicians for revisions to offerings. Both faculty and students will need assistance in how to evaluate the quality of on-line courses.

What impact does the increasing availability of distance education courses and programs offered by other institutions have on current traditional, on-campus students in your unit?

• My guess is that the capability of teaching electronically will make it possible for any business-minded group to make inroads on what has been our mission—courses that are only marginally attractive in a standard setting could be profitable when done with a larger audience electronically.
• In addition to increasing our (UM and SOAD) influence more broadly, our "student" mix will become even more diverse as a result of distance learning initiatives. This is a very good outcome.
• The current impact on campus appears to be minimal, but is likely to become more prevalent as students are exposed to on-line course from peer institutions that they may wish to transfer into our programs. The impact of our off-campus programs has been huge.

• A recent article in the National Association of College and University business Officers states: "learning experiences that successfully address the need for perpetual, distributed, interactive, collaborative learning will experience substantial growth in the 21st century, in spite of fierce competition. Those that do not will miss opportunities for growth. They may lose their market share of existing learners to new competitors and new learning alternatives."
• For the future, I foresee that huge intro classes will continue doing that many already have done for years, namely to put significant efforts into web-based distance technology. For other smaller classes, it is not clear that the effort is worth it.

• The availability of distance learning, and its use in degree requirements as well as meeting the demand of non-degree opportunities will provide new avenues of collaboration, exchange of students and faculty, decrease costs, increase student interest and enrollment, and ultimately affect revenues. Without our participation, these opportunities will fall to others and at best we will have to catch up.
• Human contact is crucial and a cold-distant gee-whiz gizmo will not do the job.
• Our experience is that there is a tremendous amount of work that must go into the development and delivery of effective distance learning, especially in the early stages.

• Opportunities center on extending educational relationships that have been established on campus beyond the period of residency or on spanning periods of absence once students have established an educational relationship. The challenges are to maintain compatible facilities and current teaching materials. The investments in both are large and continue.
• The university states its supportiveness, but when we need specific assistance, there is absolutely no movement. This is an absolute deterrent to innovation.
• Opportunities: The ability to reach large numbers of trainees anywhere around the world, possibly with few resources.
• Challenges: We need to: better understand exactly what distance education is; assess the needs of our audience and the probability that they will support training delivered in a non-traditional method; develop new training methods that will effectively deliver high-quality programs (which can have a tremendous up front cost); be financially sound.
• The broader range of technological alternatives/options will offer flexibility and address learning styles of students that are no longer limited to traditional learning experiences. For nursing, this means potentially exciting opportunities for interactive clinical experiences in community based settings and increased opportunities for interdisciplinary, collaborative programs.
• The key will be to focus and project our strengths—the people in our strongest academic areas—into the emerging environment of technology-enhanced and asynchronous learning.

• We should become very active in this area but the important point is that we should do it with the intention of improving quality and dispersion rather than cost reduction and high volume. It may be possible to achieve high quality, high volume at a reduced cost but quality has to be the overriding determinant or we will diminish ourselves as a premier institution.
• As I mentioned it will be hard for many of the units, especially smaller units, to find the personnel to work on this. On the other hand, each of the units would be able to identify opportunities that are currently being missed, which in aggregate, will be a very significant mode of instruction in the future. We should be in the lead on this.
• We intend to continue to focus on on-campus learning, but would like to use the new technology to make on-campus learning more challenging.
• There will need to be a big culture change at UM to make distance education successful, including real support from UM administration to make this an important issue.
• At present, I think this is a program by program initiative. It depends on there being an audience out there.
• The most important contribution to be made by the University administration are in the areas of establishing policies and procedures that enable individual units to respond to the needs of their stakeholders—especially in the creation and development of new programs and modes of delivery.
• Distance ed would be a good supplement to traditional offerings, but should not be pursued as a replacement for what we already do well. These technologies have great promise for on-campus students, and I believe the biggest payoff is here as opposed to making U of M the next Netscape.
• We feel it is absolutely essential to keep in mind that distance-independent learning will increasingly mean that faculty, staff and students who may be physically "on campus" will expect and need to have both print and digital media resources available precisely when and where they need it, and the need for research and information retrieval consultation and assistance will grow accordingly. At the same time, as UM schools and colleges extend formal instructional programs to learning communities beyond the traditional campus boundaries, the need will also grow to provide extended campus library services in all the ways described above.

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY/DISTANCE EDUCATION TASK FORCE