Assuring Excellence in Distance Pharmaceutical Education

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2003 by Hunter, Tracy S, Deziel-Evans, Lisa, Marsh, Wallace A

Assuring Excellence in Distance Pharmaceutical Education explores methods for providing quality distributive education, one of the most complex issues facing pharmacy and all of higher education today. Significant issues are identified including quality assurance guidelines, strategies for teaching and learning at a distance, research into the effectiveness of various methodologies, as well as technologies available to deliver distance education and evaluation. Practical issues such as the unique challenge in interacting with students that are not physically present are discussed. Since research provides tangible measures of performance in distance education and supports the assumption that distance learning can be quality learning, this paper concludes with 7 recommendations for colleges, 5 recommendations for AACP, and 4 recommendations for ACPE to ensure excellence in distance education programs.

Keywords: distance education, distributive education, virtual university

Between the conventional university and learning at a distance, they need not be competition or they need not be polarised; each has its own place and each can fulfill its own mission to the advantage of both. - William Rainy Harper1

INTRODUCTION

Shaped by the social, political, and economic forces of the industrial age when access to knowledge was limited and technical innovation was slow, the structure of higher education in the United States has remained relatively unchanged since the first university opened in the 1600s.2,3 Today, this structure is challenged by societal forces such as the empowerment of consumers, the surge of multiculturalism, and access to and dissemination of information via the Internet. Affected by these developments, higher education in America is in the midst of a "virtual revolution" as university education increasingly requires reaching across time and distance through distributed education technologies such as videoconferencing, online courses, and virtual universities.4

Distance education (a term used interchangeably with the terms distributed education, distributed learning, and distance training) is transforming the culture of professional health education by expanding access to students, introducing novel teaching and learning methods, as well as shifting the paradigm of how instructors and students interact.

In 1993, fewer than 100 colleges and universities delivered Internet-based courses; by 1999 nearly two-thirds of the 3200 accredited 4-year colleges and graduate schools offered them.5 The promise and potential of distance teaching for increasing enrollments, expanding access, and enhancing the quality of student learning to accommodate the profession's manpower and public health care needs is attractive to colleges and schools of pharmacy in this era of instant digital communication. Defining quality and assuring quality in distance education has been a paramount priority of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE), and institutions of higher education nationwide.6-8 This White Paper explores distance education, one of the most complex issues facing pharmacy and all of higher education today. Significant issues are identified including quality assurance guidelines, research into effectiveness, strategies for teaching and learning at a distance, evaluation, as well as technologies available to deliver distance education. Since research provides tangible measures of performance in distance education and supports the assumption that distance learning can be quality learning, this paper concludes with seven recommendations for colleges of pharmacy to help ensure excellence in distance education programs.

Defining Distance Education

The United States Distance Learning Association defines distance learning as situations in which "students may complete all or part of an educational program in a geographical location apart from the institution hosting the program."9 Distance learning is not a new phenomenon; it has existed in various forms since the advent of written language. Anna Ticknor, considered the founder of American correspondence study, established a volunteer society that encouraged at-home study for women and provided study materials to over 10,000 members in the late 180Os. During the twentieth century, the development of distributed education in the United States progressed from paperbased correspondence to one- and two-way radio, television, satellite, and cable before evolving into today's two-way, interactive sessions using videoconferencing and/or Internet-based course management systems such as Blackboard� and WebCT�.10

In an attempt to categorize different types of distance education, Coldeway developed a two by two grid framework that classifies modes of instructional delivery." Within this framework, the variables time and space have two dimensions. Instruction can be conducted at the Same or Different Time and in the Same or Different Place.