When I first began working in the education industry in the late 90s, online learning or distance learning was touted as the next great revenue source for colleges and universities. Online learning promised to increase access, improve the quality of teaching and learning, as well as better prepare students “for a knowledge-based society” (Bartolic-Zlomislic and Bates, 1999). Online learning would also be the panacea that would cure an ever-increasing market demand for higher education coursework.
This line of reasoning left many critics to ask: “To what extent does reality match the rhetoric?”
Soon enough, the Chronicle of Higher Education was reporting that many distance-education administrators “are realizing that putting programs online doesn't necessarily bring riches.”
When this article came out in 2001 I had spent my first year as the director of distance learning at the University of Florida in the Office of Distance, Continuing & Executive Education, an office created by the then-provost to specifically meet this new market demand. The provost had returned from an academic conference where the “word” on the street was “there is gold in them-there online courses.”
My immediate boss, the former dean of continuing education and newly minted dean of DCE, had a different theory. He said to me that if you build online programs that serve a legitimate academic need and they make money, that’s wonderful. However, if you go into the business of building online programs specifically to make money, you will be sadly disappointed.
Five years later, I find myself reflecting on Jim’s theory. And I believe he was right.
Now, not to sound too naïve, I know universities are in the business to make money. That’s how they can afford to keep scholars, recruit students, and keep facilities up to date. Yet the Marxist in me has always liked to think of the university as a place where knowledge, understanding, teaching and learning come first.
Then reality hits home. If I am to assist a college or department create a successful elearning program, one of the first places we start is with a business plan: how are we going to make this thing work and be both academically rigorous and financially self-sustaining? Faculty and administrators who approach my office and think they are going to get rich always leave disappointed. Those who are more interested in developing elearning programs that have a strong educational/social need basis tend to be pleased whether they have ten enrollments or five hundred.
Can we separate doing the right thing from the monetary thing? Is this even the right question to ask? Doing the right thing can lead to monetary success, and for me, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the educators who focus on the dollar signs first and foremost that worry me.
Again, there is nothing wrong in my mind with wanting to make a decent living. I guess my argument has to do with a more spiritual concept of “right living” that I would like to see more readily adopted in this world.
If you are involved in online learning, I am curious to know how you came to it and what motivated you.
There are no wrong answers here, only different points of view.
References:
Bartolic-Zlomislic, S. & Bates, A.W. (1999). Investing in Online Learning: Potential Benefits and Limitations. Submitted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Communication, 3 June, 1999.
Retrieved 04 January 2005 from http://tonybates.ca/pdf/investing.pdf.
Keywords: distance learning, elearning, motivation, online learning
Comments
Academic Duty by Donald Kenney is essentially about how and why universities formed and have changed through the years. It reminds faculty of the primary purpose of their post (to serve students) and is very realistic about the often urealistic demands placed on faculty.
Universities in the Marketplace by Derek Bok addresses many of the issues you bring up in this post.
I have not finished either book yet but believe you will find them interesting.
Two things in particular fired my enthusiasm beyond instrumental concern with job security. The growing emphasis on life-long learning and the necessity to develop methods for helping students to become independent, self-motivated and critical learners (part of which is the blending of researching and learning) and the development of constructivist and connectivist pedagogies that seemed to fit this requirement so well. All this points to some notion of a personal learning environment/landscape.
With the massive growth of the Web, new social software technologies and the development of blogs and wikis, Elgg, etc. I think the concepts, learning models and tools are nearly in place now. However, the transition is still slow and problematic. There are serious issues to do with the information literacy and skills of staff and students and the inertia of traditional institutional structures and cultures. The challenge of surmounting these obstacles and helping to develop a new type of learning ecology and intellectual culture is what motivates me now and hopefully to the end and beyond my HE career.