Technology and distance learning lessons from the nation's newest university: Perceptions and reality

Educational Forum, The, Spring 2002 by Winsboro, Irvin D S

Both the pedagogical and political realities of the new millennium are bringing dramatic changes to the traditional mode of instruction. Perhaps chief among these is the exponentially increasing demand by legislators and administrators for educators to implement distance-learning technology as a mainstay of the new millennium curricula. There is little doubt that distance learning will displace the traditional classroom for most teachers, if that has not, in fact, already happened. Thus, the traditional teaching mode that provided for teacher-student intimate interaction for the last century has succumbed to the more impersonal and distant electronic contacts of the 21st century. However, my experience in creating the History Program for the nation's newest "ground up" university suggests that it would be wise for educators at all levels to evaluate carefully the grand promises and pedagogical questions distance learning may pose for the dedicated classroom teacher.

POLITICAL REALITY AND FGCU

As the turn of the century occurred, Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), Florida's and the nation's newest university campus, began offering its first classes to students. FGCU's core principles, promulgated by legislative design and implemented by the founding administration (since replaced), center on providing the significant adoption of technology and distance-learning courses. These very issues are being debated and implemented at educational institutions throughout the United States. Early in the developmental process, I realized both advantages and disadvantages to implementing this type of new educational infrastructure. These experiences also convinced me throughout that process that I, as a faculty member, would be charged with implementing and not evaluating the actual merits of distance technology. Herein lay lesson number one for those of us involved in the nascent curriculum: Our task would be guided in perhaps unprecedented ways by politically charged concepts of what new curricula and instruction should look like.

Parroting the national trend, public policy makers in Florida have been tightening their programmatic control over public institutions. This move toward increased legislative oversight of curricular measures manifested itself in a new "marketoriented" rhetoric and mission statement for FGCU which was, possibly, based as much on these emerging political realities as on proven pedagogy. The following excerpts from the mission statement reflect FGCU's legislatively inspired "forward model":

* alternative learning and teaching systems, and forward pedagogy based on television courses, computer-assisted instruction, and competency-based exams; and

* alternative teaching systems and technology designed to draw students from beyond the five-county service area and even Florida.

As the founding faculty's work toward crafting the prototypical curriculum for the new era progressed, FGCU's founding executive body (the president, vice presidents, and deans' council) issued a statement of eight "guiding principles" to anchor the university's academic development. These administratively promulgated principles (created in the absence of a full faculty yet to be hired) mirrored the legislative model and underscored the values that would come to define and link the academic units and programs to the traditional areas of the curriculum. The following has evolved to be the most significant of these guiding principles: "Technology is a fundamental tool in achieving educational quality, efficiency, and distribution."

In declaring these programmatic mandates for technology and distance learning, FGCU reflected a national trend in the determination by policy makers and policy enactors to make education more "virtual" in scope. A study by the National Center for Education Statistics (1999) found that distance-learning programs in the United States grew almost 100 percent from 1995 to near century's end. Another study (Dunn 2000) predicted that 50 percent of "traditional" campus programs will be replaced permanently by electronic curricula and courses within the next generation of learners. Colleges and universities have experienced rapid growth, not only in the number of courses and programs offered but in the rising number of virtual universities, such as Western Governor's University, California Virtual University, and the forprofit University of Phoenix.

As I mused on the defining aspects of the mission and guiding principles relative to recent studies on distance learning (Auter and Hanna 1998; Etzioni and Etzioni 1997; Lewis, Alexander, and Farris 1997; Moore, Thompson, Quigley, Clark, and Goff 1990; Moore and Kearsley 1996; Noam 1995), I began to think critically about ways that the new curriculum might be both enhanced and limited by these overarching charges. The more I reviewed the literature on distance learning, the more I realized the divergent viewpoints on its efficacy. Proponents of the new virtual curricula seemed to focus their arguments on the market economy model of education and on the potential for distance learning to open up "new student markets." The new corpus of students would bolster the enrollment of schools, colleges, and universities while simultaneously preparing them for the evolving needs of the business community. As technology greatly expanded old boundaries, the service area of the institution and the services themselves would spread in new and profound ways. In essence, supporters touted distance learning as the "wave of the future"-a future driven by the desires of students and the business community.