Educators shift stances on distance learning

Apparently, college students don't want to take classes at home.

Only one year ago, distance learning was one of the hottest topics in higher education. Schools across the nation invested millions of dollars in technology to create virtual classrooms which would allow students to take college courses from their home computers.

Within the last year, the once-promising trend has virtually fallen off the face of the academic map, with many explaining that administrators jumped on the distance learning bandwagon before the technology was ready.

"It was remarkable at the time," Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing James O'Donnell said. "People said we had to be able to figure out how to use this for education. The enthusiasm for it tended to run ahead of where the market was."

But that hasn't stopped some schools from trying. Last week, Cornell University opened up an online six-course program certificate program in human resource management through its School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Cornell's online division, labeled ECornell, also began offering professional-level distance education courses through its medical school last spring and plans to begin offering courses through its hotel school this spring.

The ECornell program is strictly focused on mid-career level professionals looking to continue their education. President and Chief Executive Officer Francis Pandolfi said he believes that the program will be successful because the market for these courses already exists.

"We believe strongly in being market-driven," Pandolfi said. "Niche or not, the fact is that if you're market-driven, you're going to be successful. A lot of people tend to work on their own theories, and sometimes they fail."

The dot-com economic boom of the late 1990s and the rise of chat rooms and instant messaging contributed to the widespread notion that the Internet was the future of higher education. Many experts thought that the classroom setting could be successfully replicated in the online environment.

John Kobara is the president of OnlineLearning.net, a distance education-oriented Web site that has worked with numerous schools including the University of California at Los Angeles to develop online programs. He said he believes the technology is there, but many schools did not account for the cost of initiating such a program.

"It's a definite reality check," Kobara said. "I think everybody underestimated how much it would cost to implement technology and teach people how to use it."

Kobara's site has worked with numerous schools, including UCLA, to develop online programs. But there are resources used by other institutions that employ different strategies to reach the same financial goals.

"There are lots of different formulas out there," Pandolfi said. "I don't think that anyone has defined a formula that is going to be the way that this is done in higher education."

One of the major problems thus far has been that while the prospect of virtual classrooms excited experts at first, it simply has not attracted students.

"Two to three years ago, people really thought this was going to be a great boom," College of General Studies Director Richard Hendrix said. "There isn't a big market that developed outside the university setting."

Some believe that many universities do not want to use their best resources for the online market because they fear it will undermine the school's academic strength. Kobara said that the relatively low quality of online courses may be keeping students away.

"Universities are afraid to put their best stuff online," Kobara said. "People want schools to match the need out there with their best stuff."

The College of General Studies has tested the distance learning market through a program called PennAdvance, which has offered 15 online courses over the past three years, including four this semester.

But success has been hard to come by. Enrollment in the classes peaked in 1999 and has dropped ever since.

PennAdvance Director Jean Scholz said she believes that although online courses may be convenient for older students, undergraduates may be the wrong audience for the program.

"We're not sure if we've really determined who the target audience is for distance learning," Scholz said. "The courses that we're offering are arts and sciences, and we're not sure about the market for that in the distanced environment."

Both Hendrix and Kobara agree, saying the market for the program may be strong in the vocational field, but not on a widespread undergraduate level.

One school of thought says that students are hesitant to utilize the technology because they prefer the traditional academic environment to a more high-tech model of education.

Scholz said the in-person context of the learning environment may be part of the reason that distance learning has not caught on.

And University President Judith Rodin said she believes that students and faculty alike would rather learn in person than through their computer screens.

"We really are better at the bricks and mortar," Rodin said. "The sense of being at a place together is really a significant component of the educational experience."

Thus far, Penn's losses in the program have been minimized by the its lack of investment in the field. Other colleges, however, have not been so fortunate.

Temple University was forced to cancel its distance learning program last July because it was not holding its own financially. Columbia University, which initially had many partners in its online program, has been forced to subsidize virtually the entire project.

Although Penn does offer a degree program in Nursing and courses at the Dental School through its distance learning program, O'Donnell said the University has held back from making a major investment because the resources are not in place to make it happen.

"We looked around and said nothing out there speaks to us to the tune of $20 million," O'Donnell said. "We didn't put a whole lot of chips on the roulette wheel, which some other schools did.

"Nobody is making money out of this thing yet," O'Donnell added.

Many experts say that so far, the most successful programs have been the ones that find their niche ahead of time. Kobara said that he has seen programs thrive on different campuses that employ a more focused approach.

"Campuses are better wired and faculty have a better understanding of the Web," Kobara said. "I think distance learning is still very much alive and well in terms of the issue and its discussion."

Although many programs are operating in the red, the consensus among experts has been to ride out the economic struggle and hope for the best. Some colleges are cutting back their programs rather than eliminating them altogether.

And Hendrix still sees a bright future for the PennAdvance program, if the reality of the program comes in sync with the technology.

"We really did want to make the course comparable to a face-to-face class," Hendrix said. "The best technology for this stuff has to be very simple and almost transparent. We, by no means, have given up."

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