Speeches

Enhancing the Engaged University Through Distance Education

I am honored to be here today with colleagues who are committed to exploring the exciting prospects that information technology holds for distance learning and higher education in general. Never in the history of the world has there been such potential to transform education as there is today, and I think we can all agree that technology is the vehicle. No other force has been so influential in such a short period of time.

I was once told that technology is like a steamroller. If you are not on the steamroller, then you are destined to become part of the road.

I can tell you with all assuredness, I want to be driving that steamroller. Don't you?

To be in the driver's seat, however, universities such as the one I lead must be strongly committed to the concept of engagement. Engagement is an idea coined recently by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities, a group of 24 college and university presidents of which I was a part and had the privilege to chair. The engaged university is described as one that is fully connected with its students, other constituents and the communities it serves.

The Kellogg Commission was convened to consider how public universities in the United States needed to change to remain relevant and viable in the midst of profound societal change. The commission offered many recommendations, but the overall conclusion was that if universities were not more supportive of the learning needs of people of all ages and the expanding knowledge needs of society, other educational enterprises will supersede us -- enterprises that won't have the rich interplay of disciplines and missions that enables our institutions to promote economic, human and cultural progress.

In short, higher education needs a dramatic makeover to meet the requirements of a changing population -- a population that demands, and deserves, anytime, anywhere learning.

Today, the number of households in the United States with computers has reached 51 percent, compared to 42 percent just two years ago. Meanwhile, 42 percent of U.S. homes had Internet access as of August, compared with 26 percent a year ago. By the year 2002, 490 million people around the world will have Internet access.

It is clear that the Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, and through technology there is tremendous opportunity to advance our missions of teaching, research and service. Technology is changing both the process and the business of learning. It has had a sweeping impact on society and can play a significant role in how our institutions engage more fully with the individuals, organizations and communities we serve.

The response throughout much of American public higher education to these changes is an agenda well summarized by the theme of engagement that was brought into focus by the Kellogg Commission. Simply stated, this agenda has three points -- all of which are consistent with the Sloan Foundation's vision for asynchronous learning networks:

1. Putting students first -- being responsive to the needs of today's students and tomorrow's -- not yesterday's

2. Enriching student experiences by bringing research and active learning into the curriculum

3. And putting knowledge and expertise to work on problems our communities face.

The first of these -- the need to put students first -- is of greatest relevance to our discussion today. Online learning allows us to customize education, reaching students where and when they are available to learn. It facilitates a resource-rich, active learning environment, bringing together widespread communities of learners. And it helps students gain experience in applying knowledge to problems.

These three points of engagement are in many ways three inter-related goals. Through the integration of teaching, research and service, universities like Penn State are able to achieve a level of engagement with society that greatly strengthens our contributions.It is obvious that online learning is a critical feature of educational engagement, particularly in an era when more than 50 percent of the 12 million degree-seeking students enrolled in our institutions are part-time students, most over the age of 30.

The implications and opportunities for colleges and universities are abundant. Institutions must re-evaluate how they deliver content to students and how they define education. Online learning is not just a distance education tool, it is also a resource for ensuring a more engaged learning community on campus. For many colleges and universities, changing the learning environment to respond to the changing needs of students -- a hallmark of engagement -- will be the major challenge they face in the coming decade.

It is the engaged university that will stand out in the growing landscape of distance education providers.

As Thomas Paine said many years ago, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Institutions of higher education that are truly engaged have it in their power to bring the world closer and find solutions to our most pressing societal problems.

The Landscape of Distance Education in the United States

With more than 3,000 colleges and universities in this country representing a wide spectrum of characteristics, the landscape of distance education in this country is staggering. Collectively, these institutions increased their number of distance education programs by 72 percent between 1995 and 1998, the most recent years for which data are available.

Right now, more than a third of U.S. colleges offer online degrees and there are many models for distance education being advanced. Numerous for-profit companies have entered the marketplace, and corporations are offering their own courses. Over 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have corporate universities. Over the next several years, distance education is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate of 33 percent.

The University of Phoenix, owned by the publicly traded Apollo Group, has received much attention, although most of its instruction is actually through resident instruction, albeit in a more flexible mode than traditional resident instruction. It is not really a distance education company.Nonetheless, the University of Phoenix reported an increase of 45 percent in its online enrollments last year to a total of nearly 14,000. All together, it enrolls more than 75,000 degree students at more than 90 campuses and learning centers across the United States.

Another model is offered by UNext.com, an on-line learning company whose Cardean University is partnering with some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the United States to develop course content to be delivered by UNext adjunct professors. Harcourt University and the U.S. Open University are other ventures. We are also seeing traditional universities set up for-profit subsidiaries to secure financing for and provide on-line learning programs. Among those announced are ventures by Cornell University, New York University, and Columbia University.

Still another approach is found in regional on-line "virtual universities" that primarily are brokers of distance education programs available in their states. Western Governors' University is one example, providing a means for students to enroll in courses offered by some 40 colleges and universities in 22 states, but granting its own degrees. Another example is the Southern Regional Education Board whose Electronic Campus lists more than 3,200 courses offered by 262 institutions in the board's 16 member states. Students earn credits and degrees from the individual institutions.

And then there are new companies springing up to support the range of on-line learning ventures - companies that provide technology platforms, software, bookstore services, and other support.

Some of these ventures surely will succeed; others most certainly will fail. Of concern is not only the new competition for students, but competition for faculty. Many Internet-based education providers are recruiting faculty aggressively from universities like mine to develop courseware or to deliver programs on a work-for-hire basis. I am troubled by the prospect of faculty being set up to compete with their own institutions. Intellectual property and conflict of interest issues are some of the most difficult raised by the digital age.

At Penn State, we have chosen to integrate distance education into the mainstream of the University to draw on the academic strengths of our faculty and programs as well as to capitalize on pedagogical innovations and extended external partnerships fostered by distance learning for all of the university's activities.

We believe quality is best achieved not as an add-on, but as an integral part of academic department activities. We recognize that on-line learning is having an impact within our resident programs. Results of the 2000 Campus Computing Survey indicate that online learning is influencing resident instruction nationwide. This year, almost 60 percent of college courses use e-mail for instructional purposes, compared to just 10 percent in 1994. More than 30 percent of courses now use a Web site, up from 7 percent in 1994.

I do not like to contrast distance education with resident education, because I believe that the most exciting advances in higher education will be made at the confluence of these two learning environments -- since both increasingly use online instruction to integrate active, problem-centered methods into the learning community.

Distance education partnerships with employers, organizations and international collaborators can open important doors for all students and faculty as well. At Penn State we emphasize the engagement and synergy of the university's many parts to serve an extended learning community.

I would like to share with you what Penn State is doing in distance education, some of the challenges we have encountered and what we see as some of the next steps as we respond to the new opportunities that anytime, anywhere learning afford to the engaged university.

But first, let me provide some additional background on Penn State.

Penn State University

As the flagship public university in Pennsylvania, Penn State is a comprehensive land-grant university serving more than 80,000 resident undergraduate and graduate students at 24 locations throughout the state. About half of our students are enrolled at the university's main campus. Penn State offers 160 baccalaureate and 150 graduate resident education programs. We are a major contributor to workforce development in Pennsylvania, enrolling more students in professional, occupational and technical programs than any other institution.

Penn State is also one of the largest research universities in the United States, with total research expenditures of more than $440 million last year. We rank second in the nation in industry-sponsored research. Our outreach activities, including continuing and distance education, public broadcasting, and cooperative extension, serve 5 million people annually.

Although our mission is public, state funding contributes only 15 percent of our overall budget. Tuition and student fees represent the single largest income source. Our funding situation has led us to be entrepreneurial, to develop an active program of partnerships.

The Penn State World Campus

Penn State's involvement in distance education goes back to 1892. It was one of the first institutions of higher education in the United States to offer correspondence study, taking advantage of the then new rural free delivery -- the 19th century's version of the information highway. Over the years, Penn State has adopted many technologies for instructional delivery, but until recently distance learning activities have been mostly at the margin of the University.

We have moved distance education to the center of Penn State in response to the growing need for flexibility in education to accommodate a diverse group of learners across the life span. I am not one who believes that modern information technologies will displace the primacy of resident instruction at institutions such as Penn State. But I believe that the most significant growth area in American higher education will be in distance and continuing education.

National statistics underscore the market for lifelong learning. They show that nearly half of the adult population in the United States - some 76 million people - pursue some form of continuing education annually. Forty million in work-related courses and 38 million participate for personal enrichment. Nearly 60 percent of these individuals have a college degree. Opening up our institutions to these audiences is an important part of being a truly engaged university. Advancements in telecommunications technology offer the perfect means to do so.

With all this in mind, we launched the Penn State World Campus in January 1998. This virtual university initiative uses the Internet and other distance education technologies to serve students who are location-bound, including those whose learning endeavors occur in the workplace. At the end of its second full year of operation just recently concluded, our World Campus offered 155 courses in 18 certificate and degree programs and had enrollments approaching 3,000. World Campus programs represent a variety of technical, management, and human service areas. Penn State World Campus students live in all 50 of the United States and 27 countries. Our goal by 2002 is to offer 30 programs involving some 300 courses and 10,000 enrollments.

From the beginning, we have viewed this initiative as a university-wide academic effort to offer programs from some of Penn State's most highly regarded departments. The emphasis is on programs, not isolated courses. The programs are based in academic units and usually are taught by regular Penn State faculty as part of their normal teaching load.Program and course approval requirements, admissions criteria, and credits granted are consistent with others throughout the university. At Penn State, our philosophy has been that faculty need to be involved and courses must come under the auspices of normal academic procedures.

The Penn State World Campus received critical start-up funding from the Sloan Foundation. Federal funding amounting to nearly $1 million is enabling the creation of a database-driven environment for the design, development, and delivery of online content. Penn State also has invested some of its own resources, and we have steered clear of outside venture capital funding. I am not interested in allowing outside entities to own equity in our university or any of its endeavors.

Distance Education Challenges

Realizing our vision for the Penn State World Campus has presented many institutional challenges. We have had to respond to organizational issues, interpret academic policy, and introduce new roles for academic units. We have had to address our academic culture, the need for faculty development, and intellectual property questions. Among our greatest challenges has been the need for new business practices.

Organizationally, we have had to reinforce that there is a single portal for distance education at Penn State, the World Campus. Linkages have been built between the World Campus and our resident education programs to encourage faculty teaching on-campus courses with a significant on-line component to see opportunities for distance delivery and also to seize upon the potential of World Campus courses for on-campus and inter-campus delivery. For example, there is World Campus representation on our academic dean's Council for Undergraduate Education and Penn State's Faculty Senate Committee on Outreach. At the same time, academic units have expanded their roles to incorporate World Campus degree and certificate programs as part of their instructional commitment.

In terms of academic policy, we have had to assure that distance education courses are considered equivalent to other courses in Penn State's curriculum. In terms of academic culture, we have been working to promote acceptance of the viewpoint that teaching students off-campus is not an add-on for faculty but a regular part of their job, and that students taught at a distance are Penn State students. A three-year project at Penn State on Academic Innovations in Distance Education, funded by the AT&T Foundation, produced faculty-driven guidelines for thinking about such issues. We also have spent a great deal of effort on faculty development, focused both on technology applications and new active and collaborative pedagogies.

In these efforts, the World Campus is partnering with other units at Penn State concerned with innovation in teaching. The challenge continues to be convincing academic departments to integrate the World Campus into their normal operations. To encourage this, we have instituted a revenue sharing model, which is still in the early stages, but shows great promise. Ultimately, we'd like to see World Campus faculty initiatives significantly recognized in our promotion and tenure process.

The digital age raises numerous issues related to intellectual property that continue to challenge our university and others. Questions of courseware ownership never raised in the past have come to the fore with the World Campus. It is our position that Penn State owns the copyright for distance delivered courses, a point that can be difficult for faculty to understand.

We also have been greatly challenged by the practical matters of changing Penn State's business practices to incorporate the World Campus. We have had to account for new revenue streams, establish new interfaces between student databases and find new ways to provide and fund services. Integrating the World Campus into existing systems has been more difficult than had we created something totally separate or new.

Partnerships for the Future

As the Penn State World Campus achieves scale and stability, we are beginning to explore the next stages of development in distance education for our University. These include international partnerships for academic program development and other areas of collaboration. We have had conversations with institutions in other countries about sharing faculty, about mingling students in international law, and about developing collaborative graduate programs in communications and public policy.

Penn State also is involved in several consortia for international collaboration in distance education and online learning, which offers many possibilities to engage with our global society. Closer to home, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the academic arm of the Big Ten, is putting forward a number of plans for sharing online learning materials through a repository that institutions can draw upon. The CIC is also encouraging institutions to think about sharing curricula and students.

Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology, launched in 1999, is using online learning to create a curriculum that will be shared with other institutions. There are currently 1,300 students enrolled in the school at 19 Penn State locations.

The technological changes that have swept over higher education during the past decade will continue to have an impact on how and why we establish partnerships. To give just one example, as we move to a database environment, we may want to partner with institutions that have similar academic expertise to develop and share educational modules - on-line learning objects, if you will - rather than complete programs. We need to be open to new ways of relating to one another.

Yet, as we look at these joint ventures, we need to be careful that partners share enough of their academic cultures and infrastructure to accomplish successful ends. First, any partnership must reinforce our mission and goals and the mission and goals of the partner institution. We believe it is critical that our mutual interests be affirmed at the beginning of any relationship. It must be clear whether the goal is to serve existing students on our campuses or the broader population of nontraditional students served by our respective distance education endeavors. In other words, we need to know the market and be ready to engage in mutual market research as an early step in testing the feasibility of a partnership. Basic issues of how we define curriculum, count credits, measure achievement, and provide financial aid are also questions that need to be resolved. In Penn State's case, we also must be mindful of our existing strategic partnerships with universities around the world for faculty and student exchange, research, curriculum projects, and outreach and dissemination.

Looking to the future, I believe that universities in the 21st century will be increasingly global in scope, aided by technology and involved with the pressing issues of society. I believe that with the growth of on-line learning, we will see a blurring of the distinction between resident education and distance education and that our learning communities will continue to expand as will our competition.

Although we have seen tremendous change in higher education in recent years, we are really only just embarking on a future of unprecedented change.

We all know there is risk involved in change. But we are facing a unique opportunity to not only enhance learning, but to engage locally, nationally and internationally to create new kinds of learning communities. How we respond today will be vitally important to our continuing leadership in this area in the future. Ultimately, the impact of online learning will be based on the extent to which we use the immense potential of these new technologies to redefine the relationship between our institutions and the society we serve.