Northern Arizona University paradigm for distance learning where student interaction is paramount, The

Northern Arizona University represents a paradigm to develop a statewide mission to respond to the educational needs of rural Arizona. In the early stages IITV was the major emphasis, but more recently there has been an expanded use of technological alternatives including fully webbased courses. THe movement involved a direction form HyperCard to that of CF-ROM and an exploring the use of the NET to augment existing courses and the development of new ones. The technology now permits a class to deliver up to fifteen additional sites simultaneously, and to reach over three hundred students in this manner. A paradigm of dialogue and interaction as modeled by the internet itself is considered paramount for success at NAU.

As we approach the end of the 1990's, universities and colleges are struggling with both the challenge and the opportunities of the Information Age. Although growing numbers of students and faculty have mastered the capabilities of rapidly changing technologies, the vision as well as the plan for the more complete integration of information technology into a transformation of the curriculum has yet to appear in many institutions. Instead the focus has often drifted to the implementation of individual courses that extend the marketplace to more students who are not an integral part of the traditional campus. In many institutions the issues surrounding the use of IT have become those of mission priorities, and not of the transformation of teaching/learning. Thus, the question has often become: Should the campus focus on its traditional students or shift toward the opportunities that new students might bring via the Internet or other distance learning technologies?

While the debate over priorities might be more obvious on those campuses where there is already a history of significant outreach education, it also has come to those whose mission has been more geographically localized. Thus, institutions such as the New School for Social Research, which has decided to implement over 90 courses on the World Wide Web (See Chronicle of Higher Education, September 27, 1996) and private institutions such as the University of Phoenix have set up shop in the backyards of many institutions where the use of the Internet is an important tool to increase student access. The competition is growing and it places new pressure on the demands for faculty time.

Northern Arizona University well represents the paradigm of this dilemma. During the past two decades NAU has developed a statewide mission to respond to the needs of rural Arizona. Traditionally the university had ben a residential campus which built a solid reputation for teacher education and good classroom teaching for a gropingly diverse set of academic programs. Although much of the demand for statewide programs had been for teacher education, particularly at the graduate level, in the past three to five years the demand for other programs such as those in the health and business professions as well as the liberal arts has also expanded. This has occurred at the same time when enrollment grew at the residential campus in Flagstaff. Thus, faculty became torn between trying to respond to demands on the main campus along with ten or more sites throughout the state, none of which is closer than about 70 miles. In the early stages ITV had offered some relief to the stress, but more recently the competition has led to the need for further expanded use of the technological alternatives, including fully Web-based courses. Inherent in the challenge to university faculty to use more information technology is the need to use it more creatively. IITV has not been used for much more than the obvious simultaneous transmission of the classroom instruction to one or more sites. This form is still synchronous, it still requires the use of classroom space at he remote sites, and it can be minimally interactive if the primary for of instruction is still the lecture. Yet, as NAU faculty have found, it is still a problem to find the time for wholesale experimentation with the creative potential for the new technologies.

Typically, the more innovative uses of information technology have been developing quietly. Individual faculty and students have been exploring the NET as a way to augment existing courses to develop whole new courses. Others have moved from the world of HyperCard to that of CD-ROM so as to expand the use of all the senses to stimulate learning. yet, these efforts have remained a the individual faculty level for the most part. Lacking still are the major renovations of entire curricula so as to integrate the intellectual potential of the combined use of the various technologies to extract still greater learning. The efforts to bring faculty together for collaborative projects have produced relatively little so far.

Much has been said and written regarding the challenges of the Information Age technology. What is written often clearly recognizes that the growing demand for IT-based teaching will not likely taper off over the next decade.l In the westem states of the US, the current Western Governors University (WGU) initiative acknowledges the range of possibilities and will issue an open call in early 1997 to potential providers from all sectors to expand the delivery to the more remote clients in the territories of the western colleges and universities. This again challenges the faculties of those institutions to decide whether they will wait and see what happens or try to respond in the first wave in order to play a leadership role. How will universities answer the challenge?