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Dear all,
I am happy welcoming Greville and opening his conference debate on Vulnerability of
Distance
Teaching Universities. Let me introduce Greville with a few words.
Those who have read Greville's biography saw that he is a truly international figure:
"born in
Lima and schooled in Ecuador, Switzerland and England" the biographical note starts. - His
biography also proves him not to be a narrow specialist but someone who combines with his
international and multicultural experiences the capacity of taking the broader historical
perspective: in 1968 he graduated at the University of Kent at Canterbury in the United
Kingdom, with a Bachelor's degree in History. In 1970 he was awarded a Master's degree from
the same University following a one year research studentship during which he studied de facto
theories of government in seventeenth century England.
 But the personality we want to profit from most during this coming week is the professional
in
distance education. Since 1970 he worked for the then newly founded British
Open University
and gained hands-on experience in managing important departments of the open university: "
Greville now has 30 years experience in distance education, largely in an administrative
capacity. He was twice, first in the mid-1970s, and then in the late-1980s, head of the Open
University's corporate planning office. During the 1990s he was for eight years director of a
regional office providing services to students. In 1999 he was appointed to a personal chair as
Professor of Distance Education Management at the Open University. In 1998 he became
Editor of the journal Open Learning.
But besides being an administrator he remained an academic and researcher in the field.
I
select only few of his long lists of contributions which are regarded as seminal works within the
DE research community: The most recent book The costs and economics of open and
distance education (1997) is a core text for this course. A small succinct management guide
was published by the IIEP: The management of distance education (Paris, UNESCO:
International Institute for Educational Planning, 1992), together with João Oliveira, Vocational
education at a distance (London, Kogan Page, 1992) together with Keith Harry, The distance
teaching universities (London, Croom Helm, 1982); and together with Tony Kaye, Distance
teaching for higher and adult education (London, Croom Helm, 1981).
The recent years must have been very busy for Greville since he worked on several
books in
parallel:
(i) together with Loise Moran Greville worked on a book on vocational education and training
(VET):
Moran, L., Rumble, G. (Ed.). (2003). Vocational Training through
Distance Education: A Policy
Perspective (Vol. 5). London, New York: Routledge, COL.
(ii) last but not least, we in Oldenburg (i.e. the Center for distance Education in cooperation
with our university publisher) were allowed to re-print some of the key papers (including the
more recent ones on e-education) as the volume 7 of our series on distance education:
Rumble, G. (Ed.). (2003). Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance
education and online learning (Vol. 7). Oldenburg: bis.
(iii) the new edition of our textbook:
Rumble, G. (1997). The costs and economics of open and distance learning. London: Kogan
Page. (It is will be published under a different name and with strongly revised content and I have
the honor to cooperate with Greville to do this.)
But Greville reflects not just the British Open University perspective. His work as
a faculty
member or consultant in distance education spans a wide range. I quote from the bio: "Greville
has extensive international experience as a consultant in the planning, management, costs and
economics of distance education. In the late 1970s he worked extensively Universidad Nacional
Abierta in Venezuela, and at the Universidad Estatal a Distancia in Costa Rica where, in 1980-
81, he was an advisor in the Planning Vicerectorate, having taken leave of absence from the
Open University. In the early 1990s he undertook extended consultancies at the Indira Gandhi
National Open University, working on the curriculum transformation of IGNOU, and in the mid-
1990s he was Chief Technical Advisor at the Bangladesh Open University. Overall he has
worked on distance education projects in over 30 countries."
It is obvious that we have here an expert visiting the classroom. We all can profit
from. I want to
do facilitate the discussion with Greville by preparing two further main topics. In main
topic 6,
'Asking questions', you have the opportunity to ask whatever questions remain with respect to
the sections of Rumble (1997). Main topic 7 'Vulnerability debate', opens the discussion
on
the vulnerability of distance teaching universities.
I look forward to an interesting conference and welcome Greville as a visiting expert.
Kind regards
Thomas |
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Dear
all,
This
main topic is the 'reception point' for your queries and questions on the sections of our
textbook (Rumble, 1997) you have read so far. I remember a number of issues we have
discussed, such as the equivalent term for annualization in American English. You may also
come back to some of the issues having emerged in our discussion in the last module such
as Alan's amazement about the pride so many UK educationalists take in the OUUK model
with its low level of direct student professor communication. I suggest that you restate these
questions and come forward with new ones. Note that questions related to Greville (2003)
should be posted as responses to the next main topic (the 'vulnerability debate').
Kind
regards
Thomas |
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Professor Rumble:
Welcome
to the class. It is a distinct honor and privilege to make your acquaintance. I
believe my first exposure to your writings involved a series of articles in which you debated
Desmond Keegan (later joined by Garrison) on the definition of distance education.
More
recently, I have enjoyed your candid comments about the workings of the UKOU--
certainly, they were more illuminating to me than the sugar-coated "spin" consistently
offered by Sir John Daniel. I can only imagine some of the conversations you must have had
with him.
In a June 16 conference
postingI
reflected upon some of the differences between higher
education in the US, the UK and the rest of the world. I referred to your characterization of
the English higher education system as "elitist" (Rumble, 2004, p.14), and expressed some
bemusement that even in the Open University, a strict hierarchy of functions has kept the
professoriate who develop the course packages from having any interaction with the
masses--being shielded from them by a system of tutors who are limited to marking student
assignments and helping them to understand how to better assimilate a body of knowledge
that has been set out for them.
I
am not convinced that entirely prepackaged learning, designed to be used with minimal
changes for 8 years or more, is much different from conventional instructor-centered
approaches that represent, at their worst, rote learning. It would seem to treat students as
so many peas in a pod, with no accommodation to individual differences among them--
something that I suspect can only be done with meaningful interaction between the student
and an instructor who has the authority to depart from the prepared script.
Because
understanding the context of distance education around the world is so important
to our studies, I'd appreciate it if you could share your perceptions of differences between
the American, British, European and other world educational philosophies. The relevance
to this class is that our teaching examples thus far have centered upon a UKOU model of
distance learning in which huge sums are invested in the development of set course
materials, to be used with large numbers of students who enjoy only limited communication
with their "tutors."
Alan
Stover
Reference:
Rumble,
G. (Ed.). (2004). Papers and debates on the economics and costs of distance and
online learning. Oldenburg, DE: Bibliotheks- und Informationssytem der Universität
Oldenburg.
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Dear
Alan
Thanks for your kind words. You never missed anything by not being there when I was in
the same room as Sir John ? he stopped speaking to me.
Lots of questions and points in your message:
a) Elitist UK system. It was when the UKOU was being planned and set up in the 1960s ?
about 4% participation rate in the early 1960s, perhaps 7-8% by 1970. Now of course it is
over 40% and has a government target of 50%, so it is far from elitist.
b) In the UKOU it is difficult for professors who have to create the materials for a course
over the two years before it is launched, and are still finishing them off as the course goes
live, to teach students as well; also the use of materials has a multiplication effect, allowing
far more people to enrol on a course than could be tutored by a single professor or even by
a team. 'You, Your Computer, and the Net' when first launched had 13,000 students. Even
the project based course I am a student on ? 'Art and Devotion: Italian Religious Art from
1300 to 1500', written by one person (most of the course is research-based) has 250
students on it, far more than the course developer could supervise when you think that each
of us puts in 3 essays of 2000 words, 1 project outline of 1000 wods, and a 6000 word
project to be assessed which also has to have a bibliographic essay that does not count
against the word- count.
c) Yes, traditional universities can be poor places of learning ? c.f. on the US system
George Ritzer?s analyses in the two?McDonaldisation? books he wrote. There is a big
literature on this.
d) world education philosophies: what a BIG topic. I can't cover it but
- everywhere almost now subscribes to the education ? economy ? growth ? beat the
competition model. This affects curriculum.
- Not everyone subscribes to constructivist models, or models that want to develop
individual learners. Culturally some societies regard teachers as sources of authority, which
afects the pedagogy.
- There is a big difference between the UK where HE rejects automated assessment, on
the whole, and the US (and Latin America) where it seems accepted. The essay is still the
key assessment instrument in the UK
- There is a difference between what Americans regard as distance education ? telelearning
first, then e-learning, and what Europeans do ? corresondence education, and now e-
learning. The historical divide still has implications, I feel.
Greville
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Prof.
Rumble:
Your comment about the lack of confidence in automated testing outside the Western
hemisphere was illuminating, and certainly sheds light on the extensive need for tutors or
assignment graders.
A limiting factor for my time as an instructor is marking (grading) written assignments--I
cannot afford to require too many of them, especially in an online course, which itself takes
a lot more time to conduct if one encourages a high level of student-instructor
communication. If my textbook publisher includes a good online assessment facility, then I
can spend more time in communication with my students, providing them a more
individualized and higher quality experience.
While the underlying principles may be the same, the economic model here will be quite
different from the examples you present. In the US, there will be very few instances of
course development teams in higher ed institutions creating courses designed for thousands
of students. For the most part, little money is spent on discreet course development
activities-- typically, the most a faculty member with a 15-credit teaching load will receive is
3 credit hours of "release time" for one semester, about once every three years, in order
to
develop or update a 3-credit course.
At my own large community college, 90 sections of our basic English reading and writing
course are offered (over 2000 students). Each section of a course (including online
courses) is taught by a full- or part-time faculty member--only the large introductory
courses in universities with graduate departments utilize graduate teaching assistants.
Adjunct faculty teach approximately 50% of the courses, and cost the college about one-
third of what full- time faculty members receive in compensation.
Because we would not want to reduce "student support" (interaction/communication with
the instructor), there are few if any savings to be achieved in variable costs per student by
the use of distance learning. The savings, if any, are in the cost and/or feasibility of building
new classrooms, labs and parking lots, and the people to take care of them--versus the
costs of the technology to serve DE. Not all money is created equal--it may be readily
available for new computers and servers, but not for facilities and personnel. Time is also a
factor--a new building project will take years before it can serve students, while it may take
only 6 months to set up an online program.
There may be a closer comparison to UKOU economic model with the textbook authors
and publishers, commercial institutions like U of Phoenix, and government and corporate
training programs--all of which have a more standardized product and can spread their
costs over many more students.
We also need to keep in mind that the system is a larger whole that includes the instructors
and their unpaid time, students and the time and costs they bear, and the publishers/course
developers. Because many costs can be swapped out from one area to another, the
financial picture in one part of the system may be skewed.
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Hello
Alan
I found your comments very interesting and they confirmed the 'communications technology
to bridge the gap' to the student US model (so you get remote classroom models (i.e. TV
out, audio back) or asynchronous/synchronous e-learning models inthe US, whereas
Europeans invest in the correspondence materials (in spite of all the other media, it is
basically correspondence tuition). That gives you the kind of faculty ratios that the UKOU
has - the last figures I have are roughly 500 academics with course-writing requirements
(i.e. I exclude those on full-time but temporary research contracts), but 7000 'adjuncts' (i.e.
tutors in European correspondence industry terminology)hired to teach classes (by the
hour) and to grade the continous assessment assignments (paid by the script).
The OU is of course intent on creating an academic community in which academic minds
interact over the years to produce high quality materials - in art history for example, there
are all the 'course texts' for OU courses which are published by Yale University Press in
association with the Open University Press (a relationship that now goes back some 20
years, I think). Around those, the OU provides (also written by the course team) course
notes that take the student week-by-week through the course, the readings, the video
components, etc. Finally there are on some courses some readers (the Modern Art course
has 2, including Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Art in Theory, 1800- 2000, now in its
second edition, something like 1300 pages of selected texts.) That is a lot of time invested
in creating materials for a course that will now last 8-10 years, but will have say 1000
students a year on it. That kind of integrated course needs a team that knows each other.
[When the course is running and they are not writing they will take research leave, write or
compile commercial books not related to the course such as the Art in Theory 1649-1815,
and A in T 1815-1900, teach at summer school, monitor the course, etc. and possibly tutor
the odd class, but not every year and certainly not in ways that would do a part-timer out of
a job.]
However, if you go the National Extension College you find the college producing the texts
for the intermediate high school and final high school exams (taken at ages 16 and 18
respectively). Each subject will have a manual of texts covering the curriculum (say 800
pages) plus commercial text books. These materials will be written/compiled by one
person, who is paid a lump sum to develop the course, and perhaps a retainer to adjust the
course. The course lasts until the government and hence the exam board changes the
curriculum. NEC does not have an academic community, rather it has a small core of staff
who commission and edit the texts.
On not all money is the same, quite - capital vs. recurrent or operating monies, essentially.
(In developing countries, aid money is usually tied to specific ends, which means it is not
'free'.)
Greville
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Greville,
This
refers to Alan's question (6.1.2) . I remember you writng somewhere that the UKOU
model has a sort of perception problem. That the tragedy (I think you did not use such a
solonnel term) might be that even where the model produces better courses this could only
be experienced by taking such a course while 'surface perception' is that it is just some
correspondence material sent to you and you must write some assignments. Alan expressed
strongly his skepticism about this model (in: The techniques of Cost-analysis, thread number
14.2.20). Alan allow me to quote:
"This need for customization is why I can't see why the
UKOU feels that its courses,
designed by experts for thousands of students with an 8-year or longer expected life,
supplemented by tutors who have no authority to deviate from the lesson plan and who
are basically there to grade assignments, is such a great thing. That whole approach
strikes me as a reflection of the "empty vessel" philosophy of teaching, where the
teacher (suject matter expert) is the sole source of knowledge and the students are so
many empty vessels to receive this knowledge. No thank you!"
I
think you know the OU from both the providers and the student's end and is in a good
position to comment (especially on the underlying assumption that correspondence teaching
would have to subscribe to an 'empty vessel' philosophy. (Here generally I report on
Laurillard throwing in her 'gauntlet' (Laurillard, 1993) by calling peer interaction "one of the
great untested assumptions of current educational practice". (p.171)
Kind
regards
Thomas
____________________
References:
-- Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: a framework for the effective
use of educational technology. London: Routledge. |
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Well
Thomas, not just lurking - here is the proof - but participating. Anyway, I do know the
OU as provider and as consumer. I think that the texts I am now familar with as an art
history student are first rate NOT becuase I find I am able to understand them ON THEIR
OWN but because the texts, plus other books, plus a lot of hard work, allow me to
interrogate the material I am given plus what I find to answer adequately (from my point of
view) the very tough questions that the assignments set. BUT IF I RELIED ONLY ON
THE OU TEXTS, I AM NOT SURE I WOULD DO NEARLY AS WELL!
So on my last course (Modern Art) I had 7 assignments (essays of 2000 words) to do and
scored straight 95s on each except the last where it was 100 (difficult but he gave it me
because as he said, any comments were in the nature of a dialogue between equals). BUT I
AM SURE I WOULD NOT HAVE GOT THIS WITHOUT READING OTHER
WORKS.
Of course I can afford the time unlike many OU students, and the books too (ditto) ...
Also I am not above for the love it arguing a perverse (but well supported) case ...
STILL, it is possible to have an intellectual dialogue with oneself given good enough
assignment questions but I am not sure that many people have GUIDED DIDACTIC
CONVERSATION a la Holmberg. So for some it will be spoonfeeding and empty vessel.
Does this mean poor quality student or very busy individual = empty vessel approach.
Maybe.
Greville
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Hi
Professor Rumble,
I am just getting back into the thick of things with this class...I have been absent for quite
some time because Murphy's Law has been following me around relentlessly. So I read
your comments on the need for guided didactic conversation with interest.
I have been in the MDE program since Fall 2000 (I take only one class per semester), and
for the most part it has been good. It can be hard to keep up at times, particularly when
you're "out" because of illness, travel, etc. And of course this seems to happen to me at
the
most inopportune times. So often, during different times in a semester, I have to be a lurker
because I don't have the time or ability to be anything else.
I agree with you that participating in conferences (such as this one) really can help you
reach a better understanding of whatever it is that you're studying. However, there are
some of us (myself included) who are like sponges, absorbing as much information as they
can and "share" it with others only when "squeezed" (in the case of this course,
I HAVE to
share because class participation is part of the grade). I really do enjoy readings the
conferences, and I don't always have something to add--and often when I do, someone
else has beaten me to the punch. So I may not write anything, and it may look like I'm not
actively learning. But I think that the quality of the papers and projects I have turned in over
the last 3.5 years is proof that not only am I learning but I am also able to analyze,
synthesize, draw meaningful assumptions and conclusions, etc. And much of this was done
without the benefit of personal guided didactic conversation.
So while Holmberg does have an excellent point, in the years since I first read his works, I
have come to the conclusion that one's ability to learn in DE also has largely to do with
his/her personality and learning style. Yes, two- way communication is important, but for
the times that you simply cannot engage in it, I feel that one needs to have the ability to
engage in a "conversation" with himself. In other words, I can easily learn on my own by
reading the texts and conducting research, etc. but there is value added in being able to
communicate with others--including other students--and gain exposure to a whole variety of
insights different from your own.
Clearly, this was not an economics question but rather my way of saying, "Hey, look---I'm
talking with a world-renowned scholar and researcher!" I appreciate the commentaries you
have made so far and am glad to know that you are a true lifelong learner!
Sincerely,
Susan Pollack
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Susan,
you wrote:
I HAVE to share because class participation is part of the grade). I really do enjoy readings
the conferences, and I don't always have something to add--and often when I do, someone
else has beaten me to the punch. So I may not write anything, and it may look like I'm not
actively learning.
I agree with you. I am the same way. I believe very strongly in the benefits of these
discussions. I often do feel that I learn much more through these discussions than I ever did
sitting in a lecture. I, too, am often late to discussions becuase of my heavy work load
during the week and I tend to keep my weekends for working on school. Many instructors
consider late participation a 'bad thing', for me it is more of a real world situation for a
working adult.
I do not have a problem with participation as a part of the grade. Personally, I think 25% is
high, but then I am not really sure what that is based on. Quality, quantity, timing, original
vs. follow up posts, group work, etc. There are so many factors that can be considered,
but I am not certain that all of them are true indicators of the learning the occurred.
my two cents..
Jill
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I
personally believe not enough time and effort has been spent in analyzing how different
adult learning styles affect the effectiveness of distance learning in general, not just in online
classes. I also believe that should be a part of student support and usually isn't or is barely
addressed. Anyway, I understand what you are saying and think it should be given
consideration in course and program development. Diane
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First
of all I join others in welcoming you to the class. I have often used your writings in my
papers for other OMDE classes.
You stated "There is a big difference between the UK where HE rejects automated
assessment, on the whole, and the US (and Latin America) where it seems accepted. The
essay is still the key assessment instrument in the UK."
Can you explain why the automated assessment is rejected in the UK in more detail.
The interesting phenomenon I see occuring in corporate america is the implementation of
knowledge assessments to guage students fundamental understanding of certain concepts
learned in training offered by the corporation.
Dan Finn
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Hello
Dan - its a cultural thing perhaps: the idea that the supreme academic training is
putting your thoughts doen on paper, structuring knowledge to make a sound argument.
Remember too that the dominant form of formative assessment at Oxford and Cambridge
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the tutorial at which one met one's tutor
individually, read one's essay out loud, discussed it, and set the topic for the next tutorial's
essay. But generally there is a view still held that computer marked/multiple choice
questions cannot capture enough of a student's abilities; nor can they show in say a subject
like maths, WHERE a student is going wrong as opposed to THAT HE/SHE has gone
wrong.
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Aloha
Professor Rumble! It is certainly an honor!
My question pertains to human resources in the development of DE. In your 1997 Chapter
1, you write about human activities "systems" and how they can extend beyond the
organizational boundaries. I find this interesting because when costing human resources, a
rather "finite" formula is used to calculate the salaries/time of the course developers,
secretaries, etc. Do you find that this really accounts for all the time and effort put into
developing a program? It just seems to me that there are so many other ways that humans
contribute to the development process that might go unbudgeted.
Thanks, and welcome to the class!
Vr, Jenny
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hello
Jenny
Human activities systems as a concept comes out of systems theory - especially the UK
systems people who worked for the Tavistock Group in the 1960s (people like A K Rice
and E J Miller). The ideas were taken up and developed by people like Peter Checkland
(Systems thinking, systems practice, 1981; Robert Flood and Michael Jackson, Critical
Systems Thinking, 1991; Peter Checkland and Jim Scholes, Soft Systems Methodology in
Action, 1990). Incidentally, the last gives a methodology for thinking about hard problems
that I find hard to beat.
The key concept perhaps is the systems boundary. Where do you draw it, what is inside or
out. I think in terms of costing human resources what I had in mind was:
a) the budget - which represents what the firm pays for your time, where contracts are of
the kind 'the hours necessary to do the job' rather than, say the 40 hour week. i.e. you are
paid to do a job, not to work hours. Academics regularly work longer hours than the 40
hour week ... but are not paid for it. How long - well, it could be 60 hours; how
exploitative is that? What would happen if you had to pay a commensurate salary for a 60
hour week, or hire another half person? My boundary was very much round the budget and
what it ostensibly pays for. The budget does not usually pay a realistic price for peoples'
effort - which becomes an interesting issue when on the basis of experience in System X,
you begin to plan staffing for System Y!
But of course, you are right that there are different systems - the work system, the
individual's system (which encompasses the individual as employee, as student, as
parent/son/daughter, Muslim/Christian/Buddhist, art-lover, animal owner, etc. etc. How
these cross-fertilise is an interesting issue.
Greville
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Grenville,
you indicated "the budget - which represents what the firm pays for your time,
where contracts are of the kind 'the hours necessary to do the job' rather than, say the 40
hour week. i.e. you are paid to do a job, not to work hours. Academics regularly work
longer hours than the 40 hour week ... but are not paid for it. How long - well, it could be
60 hours; how exploitative is that? What would happen if you had to pay a commensurate
salary for a 60 hour week, or hire another half person? My boundary was very much round
the budget and what it ostensibly pays for. The budget does not usually pay a realistic price
for peoples' effort - which becomes an interesting issue when on the basis of experience in
System X, you begin to plan staffing for System Y!"
The difference between what is budgeted or reported in terms of work and what is actually
necessary to complete design and development of courseware is also a challenge in
corporations. While I may report 40 devoted to a project, the amount may be signficantly
more. In trying to develop a better alignment between the actual work necessary and the
budget, efforts are underway to more closely assess the work effort without necessarily
tying it to the actual hours worked and in this way develop more realistic estimates of the
amount of time necessary to develop a module of teaining.
Dan
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Ah,
Dan, an enlightened employer concerned about burn-out of staff etc etc. When the
UKOU studied academic productivity rates in the early 1970s (i.e. at the very start of the
project) it was clear that staff were "overworking" in the sense of working hours that were
long-termunsustainable, so the actual productivity rates were adjusted downwards to reflect
what the university felt was a fair workload, and it was these latter rates that were used as a
basis for the calculations for government aid; the result was a cut in the target course output
from 111 full credits to 87 full credits (in OU terms a credit kept a student occupied for
about 500 hours)[because the government said it could not afford the staff needed to
sustain 111].
Interestingly it was argued that in maths and science and technology the need to ensure that
the course built up on previous knowledge (if you like that the internal structure of the
course was wholly coherent so that a student with zero knowledge at the start never got
stopped by a knowledge gap resulting from content not included at some point in the
course or in a previous prerequisite course) meant that the academic production rate of
units (= materials sufficient for one weeks student work)would be lower in maths than in for
example arts and social sciences. Also arts and soc sci used more radio and less TV than
the science/maths/technology side, and making TV programmes were said to be more
consuming of academic time by a factor of about 5.
Greville
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Dear
Professor Rumble:
Welcome to the class. I would like to ask you about different approaches to the problem of
capital costs treatment you have seen and heard in different countries. For example, did you
have trouble explaining about annualizing capital costs?
I am a Japanese. To be honest, "annualization" first sounded like an enigma. After
understanding "depreciation," I bumped the word and felt dizzy. Alan interpreted the
annualizaion as a loan amortizaion formula and he found that it is built as PMT function in
Excel. I could find the function, however, it didn't help me get on my feet.
At my office at Tokyo Institute of Technology, where everything is bought by school budget
granted by the Japanese Government and by corporates' contributions or grants. In
principle we must use up consumables and depreciate equipment and furnitures down to
zero. Therefore, it took long for me to understand the term.
Now, I think I am all right about annualizaion. I remember the 1,000 card readers that the
universty's accounting department had bought before they developed new accounting
system. Unfortunately, it took several years for developing the system. When the system
was finally finished this year, some card readers didn't fit the computers in which Windows
2000 and XP are installed. The card readers were about 30,000 yen for each at that time,
but now we have to buy an adaptor to use the outdated card reader. This is simply a waste
of money. I doubut if the accounting department had taken account of both social discount
rate and depreciated value of the device.
I hope I have advanced a little about the cost analysis.
Best regards,
Yukiko Tanaka
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Hello
Yukiko
The problem is that one meets different terms - if you are happy with depreciation, then use
it. Basically there are 2 elements:
- spread capital costs over the years of life of the equipment (investment in course
development, etc.) Some people now say training as welll as that has a value beyond one
accounting year.
- since youve used money you might have put in a bank to earn interest, take account of the
opportunity cost of that money. (But that argument it always seems to me is a bit spurious,
why apply it just to capital, and not to all money. I would be richer if I didn't eat, no ...
- since Government funds are given for a specific purpose they are not available to put into
a bank, so why take account of opportunity costs?
Anyway, just follow the conventions!
Greville |
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Greville,
In
the previous module (Module on The Techniques of Cost- analysis, Main topic 8 Annualization, especially
thread 8.3) we had a debate on annualization where I, confronted with the fact that most in the class
never seem to
have heard of it, I suggested that it might be a British accountancy term. However, recently I was re-reading
Jamison & Klees (1973), two American authors, where I noted them saying "annualize (unfortunate
verb)" (p.
339). It seems that they fet uneasy about it. Fortunately, we could trace alternative terms for annualization
when
comparing the underlying formulae (loan amortization formula cf. previous module Alan's (8.3) and mine
Payment
on Loan formula (8.3.8); it is the PMT- presumably standing for PayMenT - in Excel). Alan in (8.3.4
"Re:
"Annualization"--the mystery is solved!) was satisfied and wroter "Thanks for letting
us know that
"annualization" is a British term.") Afterall, this might be wrong ... Maybe Greville,
you have a look at 8.3 in the
previous module (Click on EXPAND to see all the thread numbers prefixed).
Thomas |
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Well
there you are Thomas. I could have told you it comes up in US originated writings.
Some of us are sick enough to able to reach for our dictionaries of accounting terms off the
shelves of our library with the mere swivel of a chair, whence we find
"annualise. Verb. To a express a quantity that is related to time periods as an amount per
year." (French 1985)
Hence, capital value $10,000, five year life, annualised capital value per year $2000.
French specifically defines both UK and US isages and the fact that he does not say that
this is a british or US term means I assume that it is recognised in both jurisdictions.
******
Yukiko who started this off mentioned depreciation.
Note that anualisation is different to depreciation which is
"The measure [in monetary terms] of the wearing out, consumption or other loss of value of
a fixed asset whether arising from use, effluxion of time or obsolescence through
technological and market changes" SSAP [Statement of Standard Accounting Practice] 12,
para 15). In ED [Exposure Draft - a proposed redefinition] 37, para 10 it was proposed to
change 'or other loss of value' to 'or other permanent loss of value'. I have not checked if
this went through but I assume it did as it makes sense.
Depreciation reflecting the loss of value of a mining property, gravel pit or similar property
resulting from extraction of minerals is often called 'depletion'.
Depreciation of assets with a definite useful life (e.g. a non-renewable lease of land)
representing loss of value arising from effluxion of time is often called 'amortisation'.
In the UK amortisation is the depreciation of an asset with a definite useful life representing
loss of value arising from the effluxion of time. In the US amortization is the step by step
reduction of an amount over a number of accounting periods (e.g. reduction of a debt by
instalments, any form of depreciation). The FASB Statement of Financial Accounting
Concepts 3 defines it as "an allocation process for accounting for prepayments and
deferrals". (French 1985). Banner, Baxter and Davis use amortization in the US sense of
"Provision for the repayment of debt by means of accumulating a 'sinking fund' through
regular repayments, which without accumulated interest, may be used to settle the debt in
instalmentsover time or as a lump sum", but they also note that it is synonym for
depreciation.
banner et al also have a very good, clear definition of depreciation, too long to set out here.
Greville
Graham Banner, R E Baxter, and Evan Davis, Dictionary of Economics, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1992 (fifth edition).
Derek French, Dictionary of Accounting Terms, London, Financial Training, 1985.
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Dear
Professor Grenville:
First
of all, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to share your
thoughts and answer our questions. It is certainly an honor to have you in our class for a
week.
I
must admit, that the first time I read about "social discount rate," I wondered why anyone
would take the time to calculate it. While it seems that it might be useful if different options
are available, I didn't really understand the need for it. However, in my recent reading of the
Chronicle for Higher Education, I came across and article about a study that two
professors recently completed about how educational technology really has not
revolutionized the classroom or made higher education more profitable (Carnevale, 2004,
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i43/43a03001.htm). I do have to wonder, that if
maybe the schools had taken the time to understand what an investment DE really is, that
maybe decisions would have been made more on the true cost of the investment (i.e. social
discount rate) rather than trying to keep up with other institutions who had the latest and
greatest technology. Do you believe this, or am I missing part of the picture?
Or
maybe institutions wanted the technology to promise more than it could?
Thank
you very much for your time.
Aynsley
References
Carnevale,
Dan. Report Says that Educational Technology Has Failed to Deliver on Its
Promises. The Chronicle for Higher Education (50) 43, A30. Retrieved 7 July 2004
from http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i43/43a03001.htm. |
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Hello
Aynsley
The problem I guess is with your phase "the true cost". Truth in good old postmodernist
terms is relative (at least in the field of cost analysis - in religion there are those who argue
that it is absolute). But in accountancy (which is what we are about, really), it is relative to
the question being asked.
So a question on the true costs of investment really depends upon what question you are
asking, and where you set the boundary. Is the boundary set in the interest of the institution
(as a whole) as reflected in its budget (i.e. what it pays for), or the department, or the
professor; is it in the interest of the wider economy; is it in the interests of the student. Has
the article been written by equipment suppliers with an axe to grind, or by 'distinterested'
[they never are] and objective [uum]academics.
I have not got ready and instant access to the article you cite (as a non subscriber) [there
are boundaries to my budget now that I work outside institutions] which is a pity. But within
the context of the question they ask, and provided the methodology is OK, and
PROVIDED THE ASSUMPTIONS THEY BUILD IN are correct (and there may be a
big doubt there) then the analysis will be valid for that question. But the answer may not be
in the interests of the colleges to accept, especially if they are driven by their own budget
costs.
Quite a lot of technology in education at the moment moves costs from institutions to
students. As long as students absorb these costs, and there are still enough students
enrolling from their point of view, the colleges will not see a problem. (Governments might
see a problem because they can't get participation rates up; students individually may see
problems because it gets more expensive and they have less discretionary income for other
things.) Only when it is clear to colleges that the price of their courses (including fees and
the 'entry costs' of study such as computer costs etc etc) are too high for the market to
deliver enough students, will colleges begin to rethink their strategy.
Hope this helps.
Greville
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I
would like to respond to the following comment
Only when it is clear to colleges that the price of their courses (including fees and the 'entry
costs' of study such as computer costs etc etc) are too high for the market to deliver
enough students, will colleges begin to rethink their strategy.
I work with a lot of schools that are using Course Management Systems (primarily WebCT
and Bb). I believe that some signficant investments were made in these systems and that
many schools have failed to utilize them the way they have envisioned. Recent articles have
indicated that the costs of these systems are soaring and becoming cost prohibitive to many
schools. Many schools are rethinking their strategies regarding these systems. While they
seem to be meeting the needs of thier DL programs (communication, student tracking,
assignment submission, etc), they are not meeting the needs of the traditional courses
because many faculty simply use them for posting grades, syllabi, etc which could have
been accomplished much less expensively through the use of other technologies.
While I believe they are able to achieve some economies of scale by allocating these costs
across both traditional and DL students, and in many cases charging technology fees to
students, I am wondering what you believe the future of such systems to be?
Jill
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Hello
Jill
I think that at the core of your useful question is the distinction between COST and PRICE.
Cost is what hits budgets - the institution's budget, the individual student's budget. Price is
the figure that theinstitution chooses to ask students to pay, and it is the cost that the student
accepts when they sign up.
COST and PRICE have no necessary linkage. Sometimes prices are fixed on a COST +
MARKUP basis but by no means always; the comment on airline ticket sales which came
up in another post for example is a classic example where price is not necessarily related to
cost. After all, if it cost you $20 to make a product and you sold 80 of the 100 you have to
sell at $25, this is a clear case of markup; but then you might discount prices to preferential
customers (22.50 for repeat orders or bulk orders), or price as aloss leader to get the
product known on the market ($15), or you might have a sale where you sell off old stock
even though its less than its cost because it is better to get $12 or whatever than nothing. Or
you might have 2 or more products (say courses) and use the BIG profit on course A to
subsidise the loss on course B (standard pricing even though costs are not the same).
Generally though, the aim in pricing has to be eventually to cover your costs and generate
enough money for reinvestment in new products, otherwise you go out of business. (The
fact that some of your costs may be covered by government per student payments makes
no difference to the argument, unless you are not allowed to charge any fees, in which case
all you have to do is keep [overall] costs within grant levels.)
Where is it going: I wish I knew but the early enthusiasm is I believe giving way to greater
reality. Some of us who live through the educational television bonanza days of the 1960s
and 1970s might have said, I told you so. There seems to be a cycle of
- early adopters, enthusiasts, no concern about costs, hype on benefits, increased grants to
research new wonder technology, expectation that will solve all problems, some academics
get great kudos and professorships (in European sense, a chair - i.e. the top of the
profession - and lots of grants)
- widespread adoption, on basis of hype ....
- gradual understanding that its not all it was hyped to be, leading to
- some disinvestment, gradual understanding of mix of benefits/disadvantages, incorporation
of technology into spectrum of possible solutions, general recognition that old systems not
so bad after all and need not be dumped ...
[i am not here talking about specific technologies, e.g. vynal records, audio-tapes ... but
about the big picture of correspondence tuition 'technology', teleducation (educational TV
and educational radio, e-learning).
Greville
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Aynsley,
you wrote "I do have to wonder, that if maybe the schools had taken the time to
understand what an investment DE really is, that maybe decisions would have been made
more on the true cost of the investment (i.e. social discount rate) rather than trying to keep
up with other institutions who had the latest and greatest technology."
It seems important that the true costs of an investment be determined with valid
assumptions and taking into account the discount rate in order for everyone to know what
the true investment is and can make an adequate assesment of whether to proceed.
It is challenging at times to put together the necessary calculations, review them with the
finacne gurus, and then finalize a presentation on the value of an investment for the
organization. However, it does assure that the organization knows what the investment
necessary and in our case what the benefits are to develop a return on investment.
Dan
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Yes
- the argument is that if you are comparing capital intensive vs capital non-intensive
projects, you need to take account of the cost of capital. Greville
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While
we can debate the appropriateness of of including an interest factor (social discount
rate) into a capital investment, it seems as if there is a growing consensus that people are
putting in a lot more than 40 hours work for 40 hours of pay (budgeted personnel expense).
In my experience and in the literature, the development and delivery of distance education
involves far more effort than face to face teaching. First, distance education must be
overdesigned, to cover many of the avenues of inquiry that might (but do not necessarily)
arise in a face to face class. Second, interacting with students by asynchronous text
messaging is much more time- consuming than responding in person.
It would seem that the hidden cost of all this extra (and usually uncompensated) effort is
much more significant than the social discount factor. Does anyone agree?
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Alan,
You
wrote, "It would seem that the hidden cost of all this extra (and usually
uncompensated) effort is much more significant than the social discount factor." I agree
wholeheartedly. While I admit to spending an extra 20-30 hours a week for my f2f classes,
I know that I would be spending much more than that if I taught them through DE. I also
feel that my students (10th-12th graders) would benefit more from a DE experience. Even
now I spend time every night and even weekends using chats to help students with
concepts they do not understand during class time. I'm not asking for compensation for the
effort, but would appreciate that the effort is recognized.
Michele
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But
of course, Michele, you are talking (as is Alan ?) about a particular form of DE -
elearning with asynchronous support. Synchronous support reduces the time (or at least
controls it) because there is start and a finish time). And f2f does the same because
workload is driven by a timetable.
But your experience is I think the general one, so will elearning go on being so popular?
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I
would think it would also make a difference in the planning or analysis whether personnel
pay is by contracted set salary or by hourly wage. Am I looking at this skewed? Diane
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No
Diane: you are right. Imagine saying, we will pay you $50 to mark an essay and we
assume that you can mark an essay in 2-30 minutes as the UKOU does; most tutors say it
takes longer, 45-60 minutes, and I believe them. But they are conscientious and enjoy the
work so they do it. Hourly rates can be unfair.
In e-learning one might say, we will assume, Greville, that you will be online this week for
20 hours, and pay you X; but what if I am online 30 hours ... or 10. It depends how
reasonable the time estimates are.
But generally a contract for service which pays by the hour (a bit like paying a plumber to
fix a faucet) will work out cheaper because you dont cover training, holidays, sickleave,
etc. It is certainly cheaper to say to a consultant, we'll pay you $5000 to produce the texts
for this course than it is to hire someone on a permanent salary to do the job (but there are
gains in full-time staff too, in terms of building up a community of scholars).
Greville
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Alan
Several points:
(a) once youve spent money on capital, it becomes a sunk cost. So what you say would be
true of the buildings, equipment side. But there are arguments that the whole idea of capital
has been restricted too much to physical capital and that any expenditure that involves
spending money on something with a useful life of more than one year should be treated as
capital. Examples given are staff training, but course development would also fall into this
category.
(b) at present the cost of capital is low because interest rates are high. If you look back to
the literature around the educational TV stuff, you will find that the sorts of rates Dean
Jamison and his colleagues were discussing were 7.5%, 10%, 15%. That is very different
to today, and hence made capital very significant.
(c) what applies in the US and UK may not apply in a developing country. Orivel makes
the point that putting computers into schools makes sense in a developed country because
the cost per student per hour of study on computer is less than the cost per hour per
student of being taught in class, but in a developing country the high cost of imports and the
low cost of labour means that labour is cheap.
(d) having said that, generally in DE we know that in the development phase of course
materials, the use of technology has led to a loss of academic productivity in the course
design process because it takes more academic time to produce the materials to occupy a
student for one hour. The gain in productivity comes because many more students can
study the materials independently without impacting on academic staff time.
Greville
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Hi
again Professor Rumble!
I was intrigued by the many ways in which you found dual-mode institutions were attributing
costs (in your 1997 book, Chapter 8). I was wondering if you had done any follow-up on
this since 1986 and if so, how the results differ (if they do) since there are so many more
institutions now.
For what it's worth, I thought that the "fairest" and most logical method for attributing
development costs was the one set forth in example A: sharing original cost equally in both
traditional and DE programs, then putting all the additional DE version costs on the DE
program only. Most of the other methods you described seemed to me to make students
share the costs of items that they are not using. (Such as traditional-only students having to
share the DE development costs wholly or partially, even if they never take a DE course.)
Then I read your conclusion at the end of the chapter and noticed that you seem to favor
example A as well...so I was glad to know that I was not totally off track.
Is attribution of dual-mode costs still so varied that it is difficult to make good cost
comparisons from one institution to the next?
Thanks for your time!
Susan Pollack : )
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Hello
Susan
I have not followed it up - it would be a good dissertation/PhD topic perhaps for someone
... I found it quite hard to conduct the research, at the time. My impression is from talking
to people that there is still a lot of variety in practice, sometimes driven not by financial logic
or fairness but by political expediency within a given funding regime.
Greville
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As
I referrred to in a earlier post related to the rising costs of course management systems.
I do not believe that many DMU's could justify the cost of a course management system for
use strictly with thier DE courses. That investment in technology used across the university
makes it finacially feasilble even though the use with traditional classrooms my be superficial
or even nonexistent. I think that many insitutions are also able to justify the costs of course
development for online courses by also utilizing those same materials in hybrid courses on
campus.
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My
feeling is that while many DMUs originally went into the field of DE to access new
markets, what they found was that they could begin to use DE techniques on campus to
reduce teaching costs. In effect, any institution that (a) reduces contact time, or (b)
increases class sizes so that small seminars give way to big ones, and where lectures
become the norm rather than seminars, is trying to reduce its costs; IF at the same time to
compensate for this it changes its pedagogy to emphasise resource based learning and
independent study, with an option if you are stuck to contact a teacher by e-mail, then it is
in effect shifting to distance learning approaches, though it may not call it that.
To reduce costs to cope with falling budget allocations, while at the sem time coping with
the enormous expansion that has hit universities, many universities have dome precisely the
things I mention above. This is more than just having a DE division. This is transforming the
pedagogy, so that in effect DE pedagogy is used on campus. Generally (in Australia, UK)
its called flexible learning or more recently blended learning. In effect DE "wins".
Greville
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Dear all,
one major assignment for this module was reading about the discussion of what Greville
termed
the vulnerability of DTUs (Distance Teaching Universities). The debate is not new but the issue
is still an interesting one and much can be learned about it about costs and costing.
A number of observations are made by Greville in the introduction to his particle:
"Given the
enthusiasm and interest which distance teaching universities (DTUs) have aroused, it is
perhaps surprising that there are relatively few of them." Greville reports that some countries
like Australia and Sweden did opt against this approach preferring more decentralized
approaches to distance learning.
Strengths of DTUs
Under this main topic I invite you to discuss this article. I will give the debate
a little twist, by
including a
recent article by Otto Peters in the list of suggested
readings. The main thrust of
the article is not an economic one. It rather describes Otto Peters vision of the new university
which makes use of the new media and provides the appropriate environment for the
autonomous learner. I suggest to look at this article because it includes an annex which is
intended to demonstrate that DTUs (the example being the German FernUniversität) are being
better positioned to develop into this type of university. Peters' article includes a number of
arguments underscoring the section 'The strengths of distance teaching universities' in the
Vulnerability article.Scale and scope
I want to turn your attention to a number of points which you profitably can discuss
with
Greville. First of all, the role of how the number of courses affect the overall cost efficiency of
DTUs. The argument is also included in Laidlaw and Layard's article included in the readings.
The more courses you offer the more you fragment enrollment therefore eroding scale
economies. (Have a look at the formulas 128 and 129 in the textbook.) There might be on the
other side a danger of reducing the spectrum of courses offered: if the offer of the institution is
too limited then it might not attract the number of students necessary to justify the economies
of scales. This seems to be a typical catch 22: in order to attract sufficient students you need
to offer a sufficient wide range of courses. However, the very range which is a magnet to attract
high numbers is at the same time eroding the economies of scale by fragmenting the high
number into too many courses. Hence the fact that traditional universities already have an
established structure to cater for all sorts of disciplines puts them into a better position.
Credentialism
One interesting piece of argument in the paper I found the implicit reference to credentialism.
There is a school of thought which argues that education is not so much about conveying
competencies in various field than a mechanism for screening. Therefore the importance of a
degree. Therefore the importance of the name and prestige of the institution which graduates
you. Students might put up with lesser quality instruction if only the name of the institution
lends some credence to your degree. Given that more often than not the traditional universities
have a higher prestige than DTUs students might flock to traditional institutions which have
developed into DMUs, especially if they will receive the same certificate.
Piranha Effect
Even if DTUs have a strong position with respect to technological competence, the
cumulative
effect of traditional institutions going dual mode, and hence taking each of them only small
proportion of the market, might erode the almost captive market of the DTUs. Being dependent
on scale for spreading their high fixed costs over large numbers of students, this may weaken
the DTUs advantage in comparative cost-effectiveness. This would be a pity, since it could
mean that though taken alone the DTU would outperform all its DMU competitors but fall prey
to the piranha attack of many DMUs.
Cost attribution
A further set of questions could address the issue of cost attribution. I found this
an intriguing
exercise. We have somewhat neglected the issue of overheads and the issue of cost
attribution. We could take it up here. This is a problem which plagues institutional researchers:
if the method of cost apportioning is so variable it seems to introduce a sort of postmodern
arbitrariness into costing. Especially, costing specific operations of an institution seems to be
an impossible exercise since the underlying methods of apportioning costs are not spelt out
clearly. Are there standards?
New developments
The vulnerability article saw dual mode institutions competing with DTUs. It sees
the pressure
coming from traditional universities which, since they also cannot ignore the new technologies,
open up an out-of-campus wing. This is a recognition that traditional universities change under
the pressure of (i) the new technology and (ii) the policies demanding increasing 'internal
efficiency' savings. Even universities which do not develop into dual mode institutions may be
more efficient today than when Wagner and Laidlaw & Layard published their comparative
research. (cf. Rumble, 2003).
But it seems that also DTUs are affected by the new technologies. learning platforms allowing
asynchronous computer mediated become standards. This means that there is a shift from
individual study to group learning and, related to that, an increased demand for communication
with the instructor.
I hope you will come forward with lots of questions.
Regards
Thomas
_____________________________________
References:
-- Peters, O. (2001 February). Learning with new media in distance education.
Fernuniversität-
Gesamthochschule in Hagen. Fachbereich Erziehungs-, Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaft,
Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung. Retrieved 06,17, 2002, from the
World Wide Web: http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/cde/found/lnm.htm
-- Rumble, G. (Ed.) (2003). Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance
education and online learning (Vol. 7). Oldenburg: bis.
-- Rumble, G. (2003). The competitive vulnerability of distance teaching Universities (1992). In
G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and
online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 67-88). Oldenburg: bis.
-- White, V. (2003). Responses to Greville Rumble's article 'The competitive vulnerability of
distance teaching universities'. In G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and
economics of distance education and online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 89-92). Oldenburg: bis.
-- Mugridge, I. (2003). Responses to Greville Rumble's article 'The competitive vulnerability of
distance teaching universities' (1992). In G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs
and economics of distance education and online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 93-96). Oldenburg: bis.
-- Keegan, D. (2003). The competitive advantages of distance teaching universities (1994). In G.
Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and
online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 97-102). Oldenburg: bis.
-- Rumble, G. (2003). The competitive vulnerability of distance teaching universities: a reply. In
G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and
online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 103-106). Oldenburg: bis.
-- Rumble, G. (2003). Competitive vulnerability: an addentum to the debate (1998). In G.
Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and
online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 107-117). Oldenburg: bis. |
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One
of the arguments Peters makes concerns the continued need for face to face
communication:
"What
is missing is the consciously perceived presence of the others, their aura, the feeling
of being together, which arises in a different manner on every meeting. All this makes
communication genuine and lively. A virtual university which does without face-to-face
events by pointing to the possibilities of video- conferencing will always remain a surrogate
of a university." (Peters, p. 14)
If
Peters is arguing that a university necessarily requires face to face discourse (and further,
that that is sufficient), I beg to disagree. According to Plato, Socrates made the same
argument in criticizing the advent of written communications (See Phaedrus at
http://www.units.muohio.edu/technologyandhumanities/plato.htm.
While
it is true that I cannot tell if Gary is rolling his eyes, or Tea is shaking her head, and
others are stifling yawns while reading this posting, I would not trade this conference for a 2-
hour face to face discussion in a classroom. In that setting we would not have the benefit of
such a wide range of viewpoints, the expertise of our overseas mentors, the luxury of being
able to think over what has been "said" before responding, or the ability to respond to
different ideas that had been raised (discussion threads) before the focus of the discussion
turned to another topic.
While
virtual discussions are necessarily different than face to face, they offer many
advantages that are entirely consistent with-- and even promote--the concept of a
university. In fact, the virtual conference may be superior to the live debate in an
educational setting, in that it promotes a more intellectual discourse. It will tend to sharpen
our minds, rather than our tongues. It allows those to speak who might otherwise be
intimidated by the setting, by the force of personalities, or by the atmosphere. Virtual
discussions are more democratic, inclusive, diverse, and tolerant of divergent views, and
they can be revisited, studied, and analyzed--certainly ideals that a university should
embrace.
I
feel sorry for those classroom-bound university students who do not have the benefit of
discussions such as ours. If I had to choose between the two, I think my experence at
UMUC would lead me to choose the asynchronous virtual conference over the face to
face. |
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All
of which I agree with - virtual conferences are wonderful, and some seminars are awful,
but there is a place still for the cut and thrust of live argument, for showing you can think on
your feet even when being attacked by several critics at once - think in microseconds, and
win in what is essentially a democratic argument, rather than cogitate at length before giving
a well-rounded response. After all, in real life one has to win arguments in live situations ...
and virtual conferences don't give one that; phone calls might, so might video-conferences
...
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I
think everyone has made good points in this area. I for one am a lurker and I know it. I
make an effort to avoid it and yet I still do. I also agree with Prof. Rumble that some f2f
interaction can be important. I do get more out of a class in this type of format but if I am a
lurker here can you imagine what I am like in a f2f format. I have a strong southern accent
that comes out when I am nervous. It has been so bad that in a speech class the teacher
actually was laughing at me. I think that maybe doing more in the f2f format would help me
overcome that problem.
Leslie |
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I
guess all I am saying is that its not just about academic knowledge but about one's ability
to pass tghat knowledge on,share it, etc. At least, it is usefless having knowledge if one
can't express it or use it in some way. In much of the world of thought that means:
- Writing ... of which their are various kinds. For example, I can write a book or an
academic article. I can also when in the mood write a mean letter, postal or e-type. But I
would struggle to write a headline, an advert, a poem, a play, a novel, etc.
- Talking - again of which there are various kinds: I can give a good lecture, but am less
assured in seminars; hate telephones ...
But these are the way we get our ideas across. And of course DE provides more
opportunities for some of these, less for others, so when it comes to skills as opposed to
knowledge, one has to rate DE and elearning differently to f2f in terms of the possibilities
open to participants and the outcomes. Building in opportunities to develop skills has
implications for how one teaches, and hence for cost.
What I am clear about is that ideally we would all be comfortable and gifted in each means
of communication.
Greville
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Sir,
You write "After all, in real life one has to win arguments in live situations." I would assert
that online distance education is also real life. I tend to avoid live situational arguments
whenever possible, and am much more willing to participate in such animated exchanges of
ideas online or in other forms of written exchange. My mind is rarely changed during a f2f
argument or debate, while I find myself giving much more consideration to online argument
or debate. For instance, I would probably not have voiced this thought in a live f2f
classroom.
Vr,
Diane
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Alan,
Prof. Rumble, and Diane all provide excellent points to this issue. However, I must
side with Alan and Diane on this point. Just like socialization, it doesn't take a resident
classroom to learn to debate and think 'on your feet' and be good at it. What we learn here
in a virtual environment can be well put to use in the work center, contributing to a lively
debate.
Nearly my first two years of undergraduate work was in the classroom. I was a lurker for
various reasons. The last half of the program I spent in on-line classrooms, with the
exception of three classes. Of those three, I only enjoyed one and openly debated in the
class on various topics. This was after several on-line courses. The final face-to-face class I
took convinced me (my opinion) of the superiority of distance learning, for the very reasons
Alan presented in this thread.
Alan - it just took the right topic to get me going. :>)
Gary
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Well,
there is plenty of evidence that individuals don't necessarily contribute to electronic
conferences either, but lurk ... and it may be easier to lurk in an electronic environment than
in a f2f class ... anyway, its what you like as an individual. I for example, absolutely hate
telephones. Thats a weakness I think. |
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Prof.
Rumble,
You stated: "Well, there is plenty of evidence that individuals don't necessarily contribute to
electronic conferences either, but lurk ... and it may be easier to lurk in an electronic
environment than in a f2f class ... anyway, its what you like as an individual. I for example,
absolutely hate telephones. Thats a weakness I think."
In previous courses, we have had some lively debate about lurkers. And while I enjoy
learning in the virtual environment, like you, I hate phones. I would rather talk with someone
in person. I use email as a means of communicating when there is sufficient distance and no
answer on the phone. I like to follow up emails with personal contact or phone a call.
Gary
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hello
Diane
I'm not trying to say that e-fora are not good places to argue about issues - that having time
to reflect on inputs (both those you read and those you write) is not good ... nor am I
making a judgement about what people as individuals prefer (like you, I actually prefer
online teaching-learning). My only point I suppose is that people can't just live their lives
online, and that in many fields - media, politics, etc. being able to present arguments f2f is
an important skill, and its one f2f education tends to teach. I attended my nieces wedding a
while back and the MD (this was Canada, so they used the terms and not 'Best Man' like
we do) gave a funny, assured, well structured speech - so after I congratulated him on it
and he kind of looked like, why whats so special - so we got talking about skills and his
skill in speechmaking came from the fact that on his Business programme he had to make
one 15 minute presentation every week to his class - and answer their questions.
Impressive. Not a skill distance educators necessarily have.
greville
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I do understand
your point. I think there is still often a distinction, though, in whether online
interaction is seen as potentially equal to f2f interaction. I see both as having comparable
value, although perhaps depending on the specific context involved. I appreciate your
response.
Vr,
Diane
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Aloha
everyone! I just read all the interesting points regarding participating in an online
environment versus classroom, and agree with many of the points made. My opinion is kind
of a middle of the road view in that we need exposure to both, discussions in a "live" sense
which is important in socialization and communication (most of us get this in the job
environment) as well as conversing online in the classroom. Communicating online is a
format that we must use because we are DE students. But, I find that in my case atleast, the
physical typing of words allow me the opportunity to better formulate my thoughts. There
are many times that I avoided the "foot in mouth" syndrome online because I can "edit"
my
thoughts before submission.
VR, Jenny
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Alan
extolled to value of these conferences vs f2f classes.
I totally agree and find the depth of discussion and the diversity of ideas incredible.
Sometimes I react to what others have written (and reasearched) and other times I provide
fodder for others to respond to. It is much more of an intelectual discourse than I have
found in f2f classes.
Dan
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Professor
Rumble,
Like Alan, I am delighted and honored to make your acquaintance, if only digitally (how
appropriate for this conversation).
In
the opening paragraphs of the Competitive Vulnerability of Distance Teaching
Universities, you list as one of the advantages of ODL students is they do not "need ready
access to a library" (Ruble, 2004, p. 67) that all materials are prepared and sent to them.
Moving ahead almost 10 years Peters (2001) in Annex: Learning with new media in
distance education sets 1996 as the advent of Broadband and quickly follows with 1997 as
the advent of digitalization for ODL courses. How are DTUs handling the digitalization of
resource material in general? Do they digitalize their own libraries to allow access? Do they
develop partnerships with existing digital libraries? Or do they continue to limit the
resources they provide their students? How does the cost of doing any of the above impact
their short and long term costs? Does digitalizing data and providing online access to that
data provide any actual long term cost savings? Or considering the costs of online access
creating a semi-variable need for more and expensive technology do any potential cost
savings become lost as the variables increase? Is there a balance point?
At
DMUs the cost of digitalizing libraries could be justifiably spread across the entire
system limiting the financial impact on their ODL classes. And as digitalized libraries and
resources become available do they not enhance the actual, as well as the perceived (name
recognition), value of degrees from DMUs? What is the best way to counter act this?
And
lastly (Sorry to throw so many questions at once, but this is a very vocal class and if I
don't get them in now I may not get a word in the rest of the time you are here. 8^D (Tea
laughing)), how do DTUs over come the prestige (name brand) problem? In the past DTUs
had a specific niche that it filled; older students without time or location to DMUs; or who
were perhaps not qualified and wanted to work their way into and education. Now with
more and more DMUs entering the ODL world the DTUs' normal market is no longer safe.
How do DTUs survive what Thomas has called the Piranha Effect? (I must admit I am an
educational elitist snob, I would rather have a degree from Harvard, or Cambridge or Yale
or Oxford or Dartmouth, or McGill. But that is not going to happen (location and finances
are the main reasons, but I am not all the certain I could get into Oxford or Yale if I had the
dollars and lived next door --long,long sigh). That said I agree with Alan, the quality of our
virtual conferences are far superior to discussions in prior face to face graduate classes in
"name brand" schools .
Thank
you for your time,
Tea
References:
Peters, O. (2001 February). Learning with new media in distance education.
Fernuniversität-Gesamthochschule in Hagen. Fachbereich Erziehungs-, Sozial- und
Geisteswissenschaft, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung. Retrieved
on 07/04/04 from http://tychousa5.umuc.edu/OMDE606/0406/9040.
Rumble, G. (Ed.). (2004). Papers and debates on the economics and costs of distance and
online learning. Oldenburg, DE: Bibliotheks- und Informationssytem der Universität
Oldenburg
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Libraries:
For remote students unable to get to a library or buy all the books they need, DE courses
that provide you with the materials you need to study are great. But the argument against
this is that students get a limited selection of views and so are spoonfed; and that they miss
the serendipity moment of finding a book on the library shelves and reading it and getting
that wow factor; and they definately miss out on books published after the material went to
press, which becomes more and more of a problem become subjects move on at a
breathtakeing rate.
The advantage then is a limited one. E-libraries open up possibilities of access to more
books and especially journal articles and this is a great advance. But there are problems
with too much access; how does one know a book is worth reading ? that X on Abstract
Impressionism is rubbish but Y is good. Book lists become a great way forward, as do
what scholars say in book reviews and in their own books.
E-libraries with everthing on them, and ordinary libraries too with every publication, are
vast (even in this country there are over 100,000 new books published in English each
year). So a filtering mechanism provided by a course team is a good idea. But I think it
depends on the level of course one is operating at: e.g. foundation level ? spoonfeed to a
degree; senior undergraduate, try for more works than people could reasonably read so
there is an element of choice; project based course verging towards research ? find your
own materials. Even where libraries are digitalised, though, providing people with guidance
seems like a good idea ? this will limit searches to a degree (or make their searches more
profitable and efficient!)
DTUs and digitalisation
Most are moving towards electronic libraries ? not be going to the backlist of books
themselves but by getting access for their students to journals and digital libraries. On the
costs, I haven?t come across particular studies but the Library of Virginia found which
digitalised its old records found that order fulfilment costs fell markedly and so that there
were real savings over postal delivery to remote users and also to over-the ?counter
orders. Also digitalisation will reduce stock holding/warehousing costs, but replace these
with the cost of digitalising in the first place. There is an unknown about the future of course
? systems held in one format will need to be transferred to new formats ... that might be a
problem in the future.
None of this means that DTUs are not still sending out stuff in book form; note that
digitalisation passes the cost of printing out onto the student ? and would make things
impossible for many poor students/students in Africa, etc.
Brand.
Yes ? a problem because of (a) view that DE is not as good as traditional forms of
education (though as more and more people use DE/fllexible learning approaches this will
become less problematic; (b) the name of the University. Frankly names count, so I am
with you on where one gets a degree. Time though tells ... these days most people in the
UK might privately admit that all the world?s great universities are in the USA ? they don?t
say it publicly though. But even in public there is a lot of angst about maintaining ?world
class status?, even at Oxford ? especially at Oxford. So brands do fall (and rise). Andyes,
with DMUs that have established names as providers of traditional education emerging to
compete with DTUs, even ?world famous? DTUs get an uh ? who response. Who in the
US would realy want an OU (UK) degree? My ex-Vice- Chancellor found this a difficult
concept ? which perhaps is why he lost so much money taking the OU into America!
Greville
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Sir,
Not only remote students cannot get the books they need. I (and assumably others in this
class) am still waiting for my copy of your 1997 The Costs and Economics of Open and
Distance Learning that I ordered in May . I was informed today that the university
bookstore still has not received the book from the publisher and I certainly would have
benefited from having the book from the beginning of the semester. Even though Thomas
was helpful in posting the text of the relevant chapters, lacking the tables referenced in the
text was a drawback. It gives me greater appreciation for the extra effort that a remote
student must make.
Vr,
Diane
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Ouch.
I'm sorry about that: Thomas I think has electronic versions of the chapters(!) and I
suppose he might have done a deal since the publishers dont want to produce more copies
to have it available digitally; and Thomas and I have a contract to write the replacement text
... which is why the publisher is not reprinting! Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ... we really
must get on with it, Thomas (if you're lurking in this conference too shy to interject!)
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Greville,
not
too shy to interject: I proudly announced it in my short intro for you. I worte:
Rumble,
G. (1997). The costs and economics of open and distance learning. London:
Kogan Page. (It is will be published under a different name and with strongly revised
content and I have the honor to cooperate with Greville to do this.)
Thomas |
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You're
right - I forgot ... but it does not solve the problem for the students .. we MUST get
writing Thomas: I have finished my 2 UNESCO chapters; written my dissertation on the
iconography of Mary Magdalen in Italian religious art 1300-1500; and will start on the
book when I get back from Rwanda on 9 August!
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To
Thomas and Greville
Hey an accounting book with Mary Magdalen (iconically no less) in it -- Now that is my
kind of book-- Does she balance the books for UNESCO? -- Will Thomas meet Greville
in Rwanda and will economics every be the same.
Tea -- with a very evil grin...
And Yes I intentionally miss read the post. It is so heartening for us all to hear even the pros
must do a balancing act.
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Greenville,
It is interesting to read your thoughts on resources avaialbe via elibraries and distance
education.
In the OMDE classes I have taken I have found the texts, supplemented by key reading
provided as part of the class provide a rich resource of the best materials (at least as
determined by the professor) for the learners. This then supplemented by research on via
the eLibraries provided through UMUC and materials avaialble via the web provide such a
rich resource, much richer and easier to access than any traditional library, at least in my
opinion.
Dan
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Dan
- I agree with you, but someone has used their knowledge to select what is useful ... its
a different experience to being on your own with no guidance except that of bibliographies
at the end of works you do read, and key-word searches. Of course serendipity may strike
and you find something really good, but there is a lot of dross out there too! Greville
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And
then there is access to the research librarians. The University of Maine has a state
wide library system in co-operation with the state library, Bangor Library, etc. They
provide services to all residents of the State of Maine (a tax bill or Drivers license will do).
On their web site they have that lovely link to ask a librarian. It many take 24 hours to get
an answer, but it often helps if you are not sure what you are looking for. UMUC librarians
can provide the same kind of help, along with many other services.
In OMDE611 (libraries in DE) you have the opportunity to learn a great deal about what
services are available at most libraries, and how as a member of the DE community to use
and/or incorporate them into your work/program.
For someone like myself who is more than and hour (45 miles) from a small research library
having e-access to libraries and library assistance is critical.
Tea
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Good
to have you with us, Professor Rumble. Please allow me to compliment the
objectivity and frankness in the readings. And with that, the vulnerability article brought to
light some issues that I have not considered, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss one
of them.
The higher fixed costs borne by the DE program are spread over many students in order to
remain sustainable. The direct cost per student increases with respect to the amount of
direct support. "The more direct support given to students, the less likely it is that distance
education will be able to offset its higher fixed costs over the student body to obtain a lower
average total cost" (p. 75). Time and again, the importance of the quality of education is
stressed. This being said, with the shift from individual study to group study, and a greater
demand on the instructor, how does this affect the feasibility, sustainability, and/or
profitability of DE programs?
I, too, agree with Alan and Tea on the attributes of the virtual discussion, and a hooray for
Otto Peters; I truly enjoy his writing. Thank you. Marti Worlein
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G'day
Martha
(1) The higher fixed costs borne by the DE program are spread over many students in
order to remain sustainable. YES.
(2) The direct cost per student increases with respect to the amount of direct support. "The
more direct support given to students, the less likely it is that distance education will be able
to offset its higher fixed costs over the student body to obtain a lower average total cost"
(p. 75). (YES)
(3) Time and again, the importance of the quality of education is stressed. YES, BUT
WHAT CONSTITUTES QUALITY?
(4) This being said, with the shift from individual study to group study, and a greater
demand on the instructor, ... WHICH IS THE PROCESS THAT WENT ON IN
TRADITIONAL UNIVERSITIES AT LEAST IN THE UK AS THEY SOUGHT TO
MAKE 'EFFICIENCY SAVINGS' OR AS SOME WOULD PUT IT, CUT THE
QUALITY OF THEIR TEACHING TO SAVE ON COSTS ...
how does this affect the feasibility, sustainability, and/or profitability of DE programs? IT
MIGHT HELP DTUs BECAUSE AS QUALITY DIVES IN TRADITIONAL
INSTITUTIONS WITHOUT ANY COMMENSURATE INPUT OF EDUCATIONAL
TECHNOLOGY THINKING INTO SPECIFYING AIMS, OUTCOMES, CONTENT,
STUDY POINTS, ETC, SO THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT DTUs THAT DO
DO THESE THINGS MORE OR LESS AUTOMATICALLY AND TRADITIONAL
INSTITUTIONS WHO DON'T, BECOMES MORE CLEAR. HOWEVER, YOU
STILL HAVE TO GET THAT MESSAGE OUT AND IT IS A HARD ONE TO SELL.
Greville
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Hi
Dr. Rumble,
Thank you for participating in our class discussion. I look forward to learning from you.
My question is in regards to establishing new Distance Teaching Universities. (Sorry, this is
lengthy)
On page 82 of your 2004 text, under the heading of Strategic Options a Competitive
Environment you state "A more fruitful development for DTUs might be to gain further
students by internationalising their business" (Rumble, 2004). On page 83, of this same text,
you suggest that DTUs might attempt to establish joint ventures to gain a competitive
advantage over DMUs.
Last semester I, along with several other students presently enrolled in this class (Alan
Stover and Yukiko Tanaka) completed a case study of Universitas 21 Global, an
organization I am sure you are familiar with.
Universitas 21 Global is a joint venture between Thomson Learning and Universitas 21, a
consortium of 17 research universities established to "facilitate collaboration and
cooperation between the member universities and to create entrepreneurial opportunities
for them on a scale that none of them would be able to achieve operating independently or
through traditional bilateral alliances" (About Universitas 21, 2004)
It is also an organization aiming to internationalize its student body-by focusing on students
in Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Universitas 21 Global is a DTU that is focusing on an international student body, it is a joint
venture between several highly respected universities and yet, Universitas 21 Global
appears to be failing. On May 29, 2003, U21 Global launched its MBA program, with the
expectation of enrolling 800 students. But, the enrollment status as of November 2003 was
as follows: the total number of applications submitted 154, the total accepted 102, the total
number of students that paid tuition was 86, or 56 percent of the submitted applications
(Aghi, 2003).
So I say all of this to ask: Do you think there is a future for new DTUs? Or is the market
already saturated with established DTUs and DMUs making it difficult for a new player to
enter the field? Or is Universitas 21 just an anomaly?
Sorry for the length, and thank you in advance for your insight into this matter.
Delecia
References
Aghi, M. (2003). On-line education-A non- virtual experience. Address to the Association
of Pacific Rim Universities, December 2, 2003. Retrieved April 12, 2004 from
http://www.cit.nus.edu/sg/dli2003/apru_PPT_Final/2DecKeyNote2/Mukesh%20
APRU%20talk%20v2.pdf
(site no longer active)
Rumble, G. (Ed.) (2004). Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance
education and online learning (Vol. 7). Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
Universitas 21 Global Press Release, April 5, 2004. Retrieved April 12, 2004 from
http://www.u21global.com
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Hi
there Delecia
and if you want other failures, the UK e- university (to provide digitally to the rest of the
world the best of British universities) has failed too.
1. Would a country such as the UK set up a DTU now. No - probably (99.9%) not
because so many other institutions are doing distance / e-learning, and we have a mass
education system now, and we have broken so many of the barriers that kept the system
elitist (for school-leavers, not adults - [incidentally my dashes translate as question marks
when I input to Webtycho] so no going back; for those with high school qualificatiosn at a
high level, so no late starters please; lets not have a buyers market, lets have a sellers in
which universities choose who they want, which means we choose bright people we don't
have take time teaching). Note Australia which had a history of DMUs decidec NOT to set
up a DTU - 1975 Karmel Committee. Sweden did the same, giving the job to its traditional
universities.
2. Would one set one up. YES, (a) where traditional universities were like the UK ones in
the 1960s not interested (e.g. Bangladesh Open University); (b) where there are so many
to be educated, and the budgets are so tight, that a DTU is the way to reduce costs.
3. Why do consortium fail. Because there is not enough in it for the partners. Why would
you let the e-uni in the UK cream off money as a middleman when you could be doing it
yourself under your own, better known name. Why does the National Technological
University in the US work - because its win- win for companies who put their workers in as
students, the providing universities (they get money for almost no effort), the professors
who teach (they get more money), the NTU which is a small HQ so not costly, and for the
students who get masters from leading engineering colleges. On corsotia in DE, see Louise
Moran and I Mugridge - a bit old now but useful points in it.
Greville
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Dr.
Rumble:
Thank you for your very honest response-I will look up Mugridge and Moran-I would like
to see what they have to say in regards to consortia and DE.
Thank you again
Delecia
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Hello
Delecia: in case you can't here are their inhibitors (along with those provided by
Michael Neil [This is from my PhD thesis]:
More widely, Neil (1981: 172-6) and Moran and Mugridge (1993: xiii, 5, 9-10; 152-7)
have identified a range of factors inhibiting collaboration. These include the existence of
cultural differences between institutions; traditions of institutional autonomy; the 'Not
Invented Here' syndrome; poorly constituted collaborative objectives; a failure to articulate
mutual benefits; lack of clarity in specifying the terms of an agreement; incompatible
organisational structures and administrative procedures; inadequate funds to implement an
agreement; poor interpersonal relations between those involved in collaboration; weak
leadership; lack of any real commitment on the part of one or more of the parties to making
the agreement work; and lack of trust.
References
Moran, L. amd Mugridge, I. (1993) Collaboration in distance education. International case
studies, London, Routledge.
Neil, M. (1981) Education of adults at a distance. A report of the Open University's tenth
anniversary conference, London, Kogan Page
Greville
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Greville,
You
write "incidentally my dashes translate as question marks when I input to Webtycho".
You can do the following: Go to Options/Account preferences (upper right navigation
pane). Scroll down to 'Select classroom settings' and enable the 'Text formatting editor'.
This would not only deal with the quotation marks problem but would provide you the
standard text formatting tools you are used to in Word.
Regards
Thomas |
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Thanks Thomas
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Greenville,
you wrote"Why do consortium fail. Because there is not enough in it for the
partners. Why would you let the e-uni in the UK cream off money as a middleman when
you could be doing it yourself under your own, better known name. Why does the National
Technological University in the US work - because its win-win for companies who put their
workers in as students, the providing universities (they get money for almost no effort), the
professors who teach (they get more money), the NTU which is a small HQ so not costly,
and for the students who get masters from leading engineering colleges. On corsotia in DE,
see Louise Moran and I Mugridge - a bit old now but useful points in it."
At some other point you mention the 80/20 rule which seems to continue to be sucha
universal rule of life. Here you mention the "whats in it for me" rule that also seems to
be
universally true. If organizations or individuals do not perceive value in the investment of
their time and intellectual efforts, they may not participate at all or if they do participate it
will not be their best effort. It really takes a clear undertanding from all parties involved of
the benefits for each party.
Dan
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We are agreed
Dan
Greville
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Professor
Rumble,
First of all, welcome and it is a pleasure to have you here in our class. The "Papers and
Debates" book presented some very interesting reading. Here I would like to bring up the
scale and scope topic that Thomas posted in this thread (although more interesting for me is
the DMU topic which I would like to discuss later and will post in this conference in the
next day or two).
In your "Competitive Vulnerability" article, you state, and also cite Perry, that a drawback
to DTU's economic efficiency is a limited range of subjects. Thomas comments in this
thread that increasing the range of course offerings can fragment enrollment, eroding the
cost efficiency of a DTU.
Keegan argues against this citing Ilyin on the USSR DTUs providing specialized honors
degrees and doctorates for decades, indicating that DTUs are capable of providing a wide
range of courses without losing cost efficiency. Your reply (chapter 9) to the responses of
your original article did not address this specific issue.
As these articles were written 10 to 12 years prior to the publication of "Papers and
Debates", do you still see expanding course offerings fragmenting enrollment and eroding
the cost efficiency of a DTU? If so, could you explain a bit further? I am not sure I
understand how expanding course offerings will fragment enrollment. Additional course
offereings would most likely equate to additional departments or faculties. Properly
managed, it seems course expansion could maintain cost efficiency. However, I also see a
greater advantage of expanding a DTU into a DMU, of which I will hold off additional
discussion of this topic until later.
Thank you for your time!
Warm regards
Gary
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hi
Gary
Remember that one is talking about three things: (1) students enrolled in an institution; (2)
students following a subject (they may be formally enrolled on a degree course leading a
bachelor's degree in X, or a master's degree in Y, or they may just be enrolled as at the
UKOU on the undergraduate bachelor's programme with almost complete freedom to
choose courses from whever they want in the undergraduate course options, so you could
get a student who takes level 100 social science introduction, level 200 sociology, politics,
statistics (from maths), level 300 earth sciences because of interest, literature ditto, and
politics. In fact most UKOU students choose courses from within a single faculty, so their
degree will be cross disciplinary within the faculty - e.g. in Arts Faculty, Literature, religion,
Philosophy, History, Art History, Music; in Math, Pure Math, Statistics, Computing.); (3)
finally on a course or module within the subject, e.g. The Nineteenth Century Novel,
Challenging Ideas in Mental Health, etc.)
Now putting on a new subject - say, adding Business Studies, will tend to increase the
numbers coming into the institution, because you attract a new market sector; but putting on
a new option, say Death and Dying, or Post Colonial Literatures in English, will not
radically change numbers on the subject; so say you have 3000 literature students in total
and 4 option - average 500; add a course and its average 400 ... and so on
What the OU has found with its 150,000 students now, is that the 20:80 rule more or less
applies: i.e. 80% of the students are on 20% of the courses, so you have a handful of
courses with big populations of several thousands, and a number with respectable
populations, but you also have many courses with small populations, including when I once
did the figures several with less than 100. If you invest in similar quality materials for all the
courses, you are spending a lot of money on few students. In effect a few courses carry a
lot of uneconomic ones, that are offered because (a) they are part of a full degree course,
and (b) they attract people with specific interests to take the whole degree.
Of course, that is why some courses are project based - and have few materials, more
commercial text books that students buy, etc. - and BECAUSE THEY HAVE FEW
STUDENTS ON THEM, more interaction and possibly more high cost assessment. (In
effect these courses then have a totally different cost structure, more like, say, a US e-
learning course.)
I will accept Keegan's point about the Russian DTUs, and I did not comment because I did
not know enough about them; but here are some possible points.
a) their modules are smaller, so it looks like they have more choices - imagine if you broke
Modern Art 1900-2000 which takes 500 hours to study into: Fauvism, Blue Rider group,
Constructivism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Mondrian and abstraction, Pop Art, Abstract
Impressionism, Minimalism, Body Art, Happenings and related art forms, etc etc ... unless
you know what a course means, you can't say wwhether Keegan is right.
b) in a command economy you can just do things, irrespective of the market. So its
uneconomic, so what, you put the money in to course development.
c) in a country of 200 million people, you can do more than in a country of 40 million - you
would need to look at the economics, the 80:20 rule as it applies in a bigger market. It
would make a big difference if you very big courses had say 20,000 students rather than
the 6000 that the UKOU's big courses have ... the whole scale is a little different ... maybe
you could afford more options.
Greville
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Prof.
Rumble,
If I understand correctly, there are essentially two ways to determine or estimate whether
or not efficiency is eroded based on course offerings. One is to average the student
enrollment in a program over the number of courses in that program of study. Another is
through statistical analysis of past enrollments, your 20:80 rule at the OUUK. This analysis
can be used to help in determining whether to start up a new course or program offering. Is
this correct?
This issue also seems to be problematic is some cases as you note in your response. Some
courses will naturally erode efficiency due to the necessity to have that course as a part of a
degree program. On page 127 and 128 of "Cost and Economics ?", you cite Laidlaw and
Layard's study on the OUUK concerning student course enrollments, the break-even point
and the justification for some courses based on their necessity in a degree program.
Laidlaw and Layard essentially present this same information as I read through the 1974
Higher Education article you cited.
What we have learned so far in this class is pretty basic. In essence, there is quite a bit of
work that goes into cost analysis in order to determine whether a program or course is to
be produced and made available to students.
Thank you for your response.
Warm regards,
Gary
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Hello
Gary
Q1: If I understand correctly, there are essentially two ways to determine or estimate
whether or not efficiency is eroded based on course offerings. One is to average the student
enrollment in a program over the number of courses in that program of study. Another is
through statistical analysis of past enrollments, your 20:80 rule at the OUUK. This analysis
can be used to help in determining whether to start up a new course or program offering. Is
this correct?
A1a. Well, I'm not sure that I follow you: efficiency would be more students for the same
input of money, say - so you would measure it not by absolute enrolments on course A vs
course B, but on average cost of an enrolment on course A vs course B.
A1b: As a general rule of thumb in patterns of product purchase, one finds that there are
products that dominate markets and there are products that relatively few people buy. This
would be true I guess of CDs, downloaded music, cameras, etc. etc. A rule of thumb on
enrolments would say that if you count the produc (courses) offered on the market, you'll
find that 80% of enrolments (student-courses, not heads) are on 20% of the courses. So
the question then is, in terms of efficiency in your course offering, could you 'get away' with
cutting some of those unpopular course offerings.
Q2: This issue also seems to be problematic is some cases as you note in your response.
Some courses will naturally erode efficiency due to the necessity to have that course as a
part of a degree program. On page 127 and 128 of "Cost and Economics ?", you cite
Laidlaw and Layard's study on the OUUK concerning student course enrollments, the
break-even point and the justification for some courses based on their necessity in a degree
program. Laidlaw and Layard essentially present this same information as I read through
the 1974 Higher Education article you cited.
Q2. Yes.
Q3. What we have learned so far in this class is pretty basic. In essence, there is quite a bit
of work that goes into cost analysis in order to determine whether a program or course is to
be produced and made available to students.
Q3. It is basic - most accountancy is 'basic' but in the end it comes back to three things, I
think: (1) The first is, as someone in business do you know whether you are getting more
money in than you are spending out - as Charles Dickens' character Mr McCorber said in
the days when the UK had a currency based on 12 pennies = 1 shilling, and 20 shillings =
one pound, gain 20 shillings and sixpence for every pound and the result is happiness, gain
nineteen shillings and sixpence and the result is misery; (2) The second is, are you reflecting
the proper worth of the enterprise to investers so they can decide whether to buy shares in
the company? (3) and the third is about decision making and the direction of the firm -
should you invest in yechnology, or not; should you introduce a new product or not; are
you in better shape than your competitors, and if not does it matter? On such things rest
economic health, jobs, and so on.
Greville
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The
foundation for the arguments concerning the competitive
position of CBU's (campus based universties), DMU's (dual-mode
universities), and DTU's (distance teaching universities) rests on
a number of assumptions that may soon diminish in importance
or disappear altogether. These include the following:
While an organization such as the SUNY (State University
of New York) Learning Network http://sln.suny.edu/
provides access to over 4,000 courses, one must still be
registered at a home campus from which a degree is
obtained. While the SLN can facilitate the transfer of
credits earned in a course originating from another campus,
this is not guaranteed.
The logical next step would be for SUNY (a comprehensive
state university system which includes graduate schools, 4-
year colleges, community colleges, and technical schools)
to set up a state- wide course catalogue and registration
system, and treat the entire system as one large
university. This would allow SUNY to award degrees based
on a portfolio of learning acquired from any of the 64 SUNY
institutions.
Eventually, organizations will emerge that will provide (or
at least certify) academic credit for courses taken at
accredited institutions anywhere in the country, continent,
or the world.
It is likely that many institutions within the system would
develop their own niche programs: one campus might
abandon a marginal program in anthropology, and focus
more on criminal justice. As a result, the constituent
colleges of the system could become more efficient by
specializing, no longer having to carry the burden of
courses that do not attract many students or that cannot
be done well. The effect of such a change is that the
competition would shift from the institutional level to the
program and individual course level. Why would I take a
philosophy course from Marginal State U. if I could take it
from Exceptional State U.?
-
Faculty
are associated primarily with one institution. In
the new educational order, a faculty member need not be
stuck teaching courses outside of his or her specialty or
area of interest simply because there are not enough
students at his or her particular institution who can take
the course at the time it is scheduled--and students
interested in a particular specialty are not stuck learning it
from someone whose primary interest and expertise is in
another area. As a result, competition also shifts from the
institutional level to the level of the professoriate. If I
wanted to study extensively under Prof. Rumble or Peters, I
could take their courses without having to suffer others at
their home institutions.
From this, I could foresee individual academics banding
together to create programs of high quality. They would
have greater academic freedom, and could even assume the
role of "free agents"--perhaps contracting with educational
publishers to provide the support to produce their course
materials. Of course, this is exactly what happens now on a
limited scale--but imagine if a group of Harvard business
professors banded together to market the Harvard Business
School curriculum (with royalties to Harvard, of course, for
the use of its name)--to compete with the University of
Chicago people at Cardean!
And of course, there will be little to prevent US institutions
from outsourcing course design and delivery to other
countries with highly- qualified (but less expensive)
educators!
-
An
antiquated pricing and value structure. Online
programs in DMU's--which most American universities have
become, according to a Sloan Foundation report-- are
currently hampered by the pricing structure of the past,
which is based on a fixed geographic location and a single
price for each academic credit, regardless of the cost (or
value to the student) of the course. For example, UMUC's
online programs cannot compete for distance learners from
other states or countries because courses are priced based
on Maryland state residency. Highly-subsidized higher
education overseas makes U.S. tuition unaffordable to all
but a few.
Eventually, market pricing will come into play. Just as an
airliner is filled with passengers who have paid different
prices for their seats, I can see that educational
institutions will provide price incentives to fill empty seats--
perhaps even offering "frequent- learner" tuition credits.
This variable pricing structure already happens when a
corporation makes a deal to send a group of students to an
institution at a discount from the regular tuition rates. U21
Global
has tuition rates that vary depending on the
student's country of origin (with the highest rates charged
to US students, of course).
Like the airlines, I see educational institutions cutting
out
unprofitable courses (abandoning them to the "niche"
providers), and competing aggressively on the most popular
and profitable areas. We may see universities "selling off"
whole departments in order to acquire others that are more
in line with their mission and economic goals.
From an economic standpoint, then, the value of human
capital will need to be assessed. Furthermore, the
investment that an institution has made in an individual
course or a complete program (in both tangible and human
resources) will become less important than its economic
value, measured by its ability to generate income.
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Hello
Alan
Personnally I think that that is a great contribution to this debate.
1. Students must obtain their education from a single source to qualify for a degree
(although a limited number of transfer credits are usually allowed). CBU's offer a much
larger range of courses, while DTU's can attract students who cannot attend a CBU.
a. the throw-away line at the end of my competitive article - DTUs best option would be to
become DMUs, was my preferred option and still is;
b. amalgamations and mergers and collaborative ventures are much more important now
(though they seem still to be unstable - see some of the other postings we have had).
Collaboration though is a competitive strategy.
c. Credit transfer structures are widespread - persuading institutions to allow their students
to move around is much more difficult. IF and when credit transfer structures also set the
rules about what constitutes a degree (number of credits at level 1, level 2, level 3 etc and
imposes that on colleges, and then allows individuals to mix and match, then you'll get more
fluid movement between institutions - whose degree do you get? does it matter? could you
link your degree to the people you studies under? Possibly ... if the professor is high profile
enough.
2. Faculty are associated primarily with one institution.
a. In the UK higher education is after the building / construction industry, catering and allied
trades such as hotel maids etc; and acting; the industry with the highest number of
casualised workers in the country. So many academics already have portfolio jobs made up
of contracts here and there - as indeed I do now (current contracts World Bank,
UNESCO, CfBT consulting, U of Oldenburg). None of these have any security longterm.
b. the net provides considerable possibilities. You might be interested in the attached paper
(at least parts of it towards the end) which I first wrote up as a conference paper in 1988
and then as an article: Greville Rumble. 1998. Academic work in the Information Age. A
speculative essay. Journal of Information Technology in Teacher Education, 7 (1), 129- 45.
For me getting your name known, and the breaking the monopoly power over degree
awarding without compromising quality, are key issues.
3. An antiquated pricing and value structure.
a. Agreed: there are signs in some places that it is breaking down.
Greville
ACADEMIC WORK IN
THE INFORMATION AGE: A SPECULATIVE ESSAY
Greville Rumble
The Open University
Both campus-based universities
and distance teaching universities are highly bureaucratised
organisations that have eroded the traditional autonomy of the academic and created environments in
which education is de-humanised. Developments in telecommunications and computer-based
communications open up the possibility of creating new forms of interactive universities that can
operate globally, irrespective of the place of abode of either students or staff. Exploiting these
possibilities to advantage will require the development of new social relations, and in particular of
different cash relationships between academics, students, and validating or licensing authorities that
will, in many ways, mirror the artisanal organisation of the twelfth century university. Such interactive
universities will, however, be well suited to meet the lifelong learning needs of mobile knowledge
workers.
The Costs and Economics
of Open and Distance Learning, was published in 1997.
These generational
shifts in distance education have been equated with particular modes of
production: first and second generation distance education has been characterised as an industrialised
mode of production while third generation systems are seen as opening up the possibility of
developing flexible post-Fordist modes of production. The strength with which this link is asserted
suggests an element of technological determinism in the views of distance educators. While
technology clearly is a factor in the organisation of work in technology-based educational systems,
the
organisation and control of work are also determined by social factors and by conceptions about the
impact of size and the need for economies of scale on organisational structures. This is true both in
respect of the history of distance education and with regard to its future. The organisational forms
that
we have could be different if people wanted them to be. One way of approaching these issues is to
situate the debate within the discourse of industrial sociology, and in particular the issues around
the
industrialisation of education.
The industrialisation
of teaching
Traditionally the work
of academics has involved teaching, research and administration. It is clear that
their work has changed markedly in response to a number of factors: the shift from an elite to a mass
higher education system; the growth of team teaching, requiring co-ordination and joint-decision
making rather than individual academic autonomy; increased emphasis on the need to be responsive to
the market; increased entrepreneurialism, including the exploitation of intellectual property rights
and
patents and the rise of academic-related business; the increased intervention of the State with its
concern for value for money, efficiency, and quality; the increased complexity of administration,
resulting in the rise of a professional managerial class in higher education; and increasingly successful
attempt to split teaching and research.
Until quite recently
the academic labour market was essentially that of a craft industry in which the
worker (academic) directly controlled the process of work (Rumble, 1981: 181; Peters, 1983: 96). But
traditional forms of higher education have changed, as Halsey (1995) reminds us. The craft-based
approach exemplified by the Oxbridge tutorial system in which 'one of the tutors was responsible for
examining the needs of individual students, suggesting the tutorials and seminars which they should
attend and advising on reading lists and the whole pattern of study towards a degree' (Sewart, 1992:
230) could not survive the massification of higher education. Marginson (1995: 34) comments on the
loss of individual autonomy of academics working in traditional institutions. Miller (1995: 57) sees
'degrees of deskilling, degradation through loss of status and some loss of control [over the labour
process]', so that, for example, higher education in the United Kingdom has been subject to 'similar
processes happening to the academic labour process as Braverman [1974] asserts has been happening
to skilled craft labour in his analysis of capitalism in the twentieth century' (Miller, 1991: 133).
Shumar
(1995: 84) believes that 'the university increasingly follows a factory model where scholars are labourers
in the sweatshop of thought'. Miller (1995: 50, 53-4), Buckbinder and Rajagopal (1995: 61, 70) and
Shumar (1995: 89-92) all point to the increased managerialism of higher education and the
proletarianisation of the academic profession. Ritzer (1993: 55-7, 73-7, 115-6, 141-2) holds that in
the
United States education, including higher education, has been subjected to a process of
'McDonaldisation' marked by 'the culmination of a series of rationalisation processes that have been
occurring throughout the twentieth century' that are best exemplified in the practices of the McDonalds
fast food chain (Ritzer, 1993: 31-2). Ritzer's McDonaldisation thesis is situated in Weber's theory
of
rationalisation: analysing universities he points (pp. 55-7, 73-7, 115-6, 141-2) to the pressures for
efficiency (larger classes, reliance on resource-based learning and particularly customised textbooks,
use of machine-graded multiple choice questions for assessment), calculability (use of Grade Point
Averages to summarise in one figure a student's achievement, quantified examinations to filter
applicants, student rating forms to evaluate professors), predictability (imposed by the format and
grading of multiple choice questions, thus eliminating subjective judgement on the part of professors),
control (training students to accept highly rationalised procedures such as objective testing, timed
lesson plans, the definition of what is to be taught in particular lessons), and as an outcome, the
growth of irrationality with many staff and students put off by 'the huge factory-like atmosphere of
these universities' where education can be 'a de- humanising experience' in which it is difficult for
students to get to know other students and virtually impossible for them to know their professors (pp.
141- 2).
In organisational terms
this reflects the shift from a communal model of organisation based on personal
relationships (including partnerships, federations, and craft networks) to a bureaucracy based on the
rational definition of office. The nineteenth century emergence of bureaucracy was inevitable because,
in situations where communication travels up and down hierarchies it is a much better system for
organising large numbers of people in the pursuit of goals. By the late nineteenth century it had
emerged as the clear organisational winner in the civil service, in large firms, in the armed forces
and in
schools (Hamilton, 1989: 139). Traditional universities only began to be significantly affected by this
trend in the latter half of the twentieth century as they began to grow bigger.
In contrast to traditional
education, distance education (other than very small systems which can be
run as craft enterprises) has for many years been regarded as an industrialised process. Peters, in
his
early writings (Peters 1967, 1973, 1983) argued that all distance education is an industrialised form
of
education involving such characteristics of Weberian bureaucracy as rationalisation, the division of
labour, increased managerialism, the loss of labour power, increased mechanisation, the use of capital
intensive technology, and an assembly line approach to production. Rationalisation involves careful
analysis of the entire production process, planning and specifying each work process to ensure
efficient and effective contribution towards the achievement of business aims. In distance education
this involves a redefinition of the labour process such that the integrated craft of teaching is broken
up
into constituent parts. Generally speaking, the overall task can be divided into at least six distinct
phases which could be undertaken by separate people: curriculum design (specifying what is to be
taught), instructional design (saying how it is to be taught), content preparation (authoring teaching
materials), tutorial backup (supporting students with subject-based problems and learning difficulties),
continuous assessment (involving both evaluation and teaching through feedback on assignments),
and examination. There are a number of reasons for this division of labour. It takes longer to design
and
develop one hour's worth of student learning taught by print or broadcasting or computer assisted
learning technologies than it does to prepare a one hour seminar or lecture, so any course covering
a
sizeable curriculum requires several and perhaps many academics working in a team to develop it.
Smaller modular courses, of from 30 to 50 hours of student learning, may of course be developed by a
single academic. Also, the use of materials enables very large numbers of students to enrol on a course,
requiring the appointment of a team of academics to mark assignments and examination scripts and
perhaps conduct local tutorials. As a result the teaching process is often divided between many people
- one group that designs and writes the materials and another that tutors and assesses the students.
Teaching students at
a distance cannot be done without the use of technologies to deliver media such
as text, audio, video, computing. Many of the technologies require production expertise that academics
lack so that production becomes a team activity involving professionals and technical staff from a
range of industries (broadcasting, print, computing, etc.). This adds to the fractured complexity of
the
labour process. However, it also changes the nature of the lesson from something that, however well-
planned in advance, is essentially subject to the exigencies of the moment within the classroom, to
something that is a standardised product that can be delivered to theoretically unlimited numbers of
students. As Peters's comments (1983: 99), 'the rationalisation effect of mass production becomes
apparent here'. Similarly, Lewis's work on the planning and scheduling of course production at the UK
Open University showed how rationalised and planned the process of production could be (Lewis,
1971a, 1971b); different institutions approach the development and production task differently, with
some employing a chain approach in which work is passed from one person to the next in line, as on an
assembly line; others using teams of academics, editors, producers, etc. On the delivery side, the
number of tutorials are defined and their pacing pre-determined by course calendars; tutors on some
courses are given detailed course notes suggesting topics and approaches for tutorials; assessment is
standardised as much as possible through marking schemes; and tutors are told how to comment on
scripts. The emphasis on planning, the formalisation and standardisation of processes and procedures,
and the organisation of activities, underlines the Weberian characteristics of distance education.
The division of labour
- and the need to plan and control the production and delivery processes -
means that the individual academic no longer controls the whole process of teaching (Rumble, 1981:
182). This reduces the autonomy of the individual academic to decide how courses will be taught and
assessed - the decision-making powers often passing to administrative staff and committees. Distance
teaching universities are characterised by the strength and power of the committees controlling
academic processes. As a direct result some commentators have seen a process of academic de- skilling
and loss of labour power associated with the division of labour and the rise of managerialism in
distance education (Peters, 1983: 100-5, 108; Peters, 1989: 5; Campion and Renner, 1992: 10, Raggett,
1993: 25-7). The extent of this de-skilling is disputed, though there is general agreement that those
who
just tutor and mark assignments and scripts have narrower, less skilled jobs. On the other hand, many
of the academics responsible for designing courses have acquired some of the production skills
previously held by specialist professional producers. This may account for the enthusiastic support
some academics give 'instructional design' and distance education (Campion and Renner, 1995: 81).
Certainly, highly specialised workers often have considerable levels of discretion over their work
process (Child, 1984: 26-7). However, the disempowerment of academic labour has been increased
recently by the search for market-generated income, so that what academics do is determined by their
institutions and the requirement to bring in money, at the expense of non-market directed activity,
diversity and innovation on the one hand, and the individual autonomy of the academic on the other
(Marginson, 1995: 32-6).
Mechanisation enables
many thousands of standardised teaching packages to be produced. Indeed,
distance education lends itself to mass production but, as Peters (1983: 102) points out, mass
production is only possible 'where there is a sufficiently large "mass of consumers"'. Attempting
to
meet demand, traditional universities have increased the size of their teaching groups so that 'today's
practice of applying methods designed for small groups to large groups must be seen as a perversion
of an educational concept' (ibid.: 102). Distance education achieves the same end through different
means.
The intermediate product
of this process is the teaching package which is the main vehicle for teaching
students; the final product is a student who has been taught. The more the nature of the product is
pre-
determined, and the processes governing its development and production standardised and formalised,
the more the production process as a whole loses its subjective element, and the more the craft-like
nature of the process is objectified (Peters, 1983: 108). In distance education the scope of individual
teachers to follow their own inclinations, to digress, to change their methods, to adapt the content,
is
limited, pushed to the sidelines of an infrequent tutorial or marginal comment on an assessment script.
What the student consumes is a standardised package. The student, though, is all too often a passive
or minimalist consumer at that. Thus Harris (1987: 112-4) describes the fictional Open University
student, Mr. Wavendon, a man who 'wanted a degree to consolidate his position as a teacher, even
though he believed that degrees were now "devalued", because everyone in teaching now seemed
to
have one', and who takes an entirely instrumental approach to his studies, focusing exclusively on the
assignments (where marks count towards passing the course) in which he tells the assessors 'exactly
what they want to hear', and who manages to pass the course without ever entering into a dialogue
with the content. In higher education, though, 'what is important is argument between people,
unconstrained discussions that raise "validity claims" of several types, and which settle
these claims
only by the force of better argument' (ibid.: 142). For Harris, however, 'distance education on the
OU
pattern at least, is the only form of higher education specifically designed on any other basis than
the
democratic discussion' (p. 142). This is dangerous. As Ritzer (1998: 3) remarks, 'the functional
rationalisation that would be associated with a process like McDonaldization poses a threat to
substantial rationality, or the ability to think intelligently. ... That is, McDonaldized systems (through
rules, regulations, scripts, and so on) do encroach upon, and ultimately threaten, the ability of those
involved in them to think intelligently'.
From Bureaucratic
to interactive, Post- Bureaucratic university structures
The bureaucratisation
of academic work and the loss of individual autonomy has led commentators
such as Campion and Renner (1992: 11) to argue the need for an alternative approach that will give
academics greater control over their work. If academics are to regain control over the whole teaching-
learning process then at least three things need to happen: First, the course modules must be small
enough so that a single academic can develop them. The Open University's model of very large
distance-taught modules requiring many hours of development time and hence large course teams
divide the work up between too many people, leading to the need to vest control elsewhere. Second,
the number of students studying the course must be no greater than one person can handle in terms of
marking assignments, responding to mail, e-mails and telephone calls, and successfully moderating a
computer conference. Third, control over the various administrative processes has to be devolved to
(perhaps, given back to) the academic - who sets and marks the assignments, monitors the students'
progress, and is responsible for updating students' records. It is here that third generation distance
education systems come into their own. The pedagogic payoff could be (at least, in the best of
circumstances) that dialogue is placed once again at the heart of the educational process. Some
commentators are now linking IT and constructivist theories of learning (e.g. Jones, 1995; Collis, 1996:
135) and collaborative communication patterns - suggesting that the payoff is there to be had.
By putting the user
in direct contact with the prime service provider, the Internet has eliminated the
need for any organisational intermediary between teacher and student. Individual academics can
develop a curriculum and materials for an Internet based course and teach it from their own Web site.
This is an electronic version of the way some of the early correspondence schools developed as one
person bands. The main problems for the individual academic are, first, ensuring an organisational
framework that allows them freedom with remuneration; second, establishing their reputation; third,
publicising their course; and fourth, getting their course accredited. The Internet - by resolving these
issues - provides opportunities for the evolution of a new kind of university that in some way parallels
the emergence of the intellectual as an artisan in the twelfth century and of the corporate university
in
the thirteenth century.
The term intellectual,
as used here, 'denotes those whose profession it was to think and share their
thoughts' (Le Goff, 1993: 1). Such persons begin to be identifiable in the twelfth century as masters
and
students congregated in urban centres such as Paris, Chartres, Reims, Orleans; others, the goliardic
or
wandering clerks or vagabonds, exploiting the social mobility that characterised the age, moved from
town to town. The town intellectuals of the twelfth century saw themselves as artisans, professional
men whose function was to study and teach in schools that 'were workshops out of which ideas, like
merchandise, were exported' (ibid: 62). Some time in the twelfth century, these intellectual artisans
began to organise themselves within corporations or colleges of masters and students, out of which
the universities developed.
The universities that
emerged from this process were essentially ecclesiastical corporations whose goal
was a local monopoly - secured through the right to confer university degrees. Although practices
varied, the examination process was usually a staged process, broken down into two major parts, the
first leading to the conferment of the bachelor's degree, the second to the conferment of a licence
to
teach (the master's degree) (Le Goff, 1993: 77-9). Once embarked on a career as a master, the intellectual
faced a practical problem: how to live. Masters were paid from two sources: salaries and stipends.
Salaries, reflecting the master's position as a worker, were derived from on the one hand the master's
students and on the other the civil authorities. Stipends or scholarships were gifts from private
benefactors, public organisations and civil authorities. These different options, as Le Goff (1993:
93)
shows, had important consequences: 'If a master received a salary, he could be a merchant, if his
students paid him; or a functionary, if he were remunerated by the communal or princely powers; or a
sort of domestic, if he lived off the generosity of a benefactor'. Masters who lived off the money they
were paid by their students had the advantage that they were free of temporal and ecclesiastical powers
and private patrons: 'This solution seemed natural to them for it conformed the most with the habits
of
the urban workplace of which they considered themselves to be members. Masters sold their
knowledge and instruction the way artisans sold their wares' (Le Goff, 1993: 94).
Current technological
developments in telecommunications and computing, coupled with
developments in the labour market, have opened up opportunities for academics to redefine their
relationship with the university in ways that parallel the relationship between the twelfth and thirteenth
century university and the intellectual. At the technological level these developments include:
• advances in telecommunications
and computing and the development of information technologies
• the installation of information
and communications platforms which allow everyone in an enterprise
to be linked both to a common source of organisational memory and to each other
• the existence of personal, portable
technologies allowing mobile tele-working
which enable academics
to break physically with the university. Like their students they can work at a
distance from their university.
The organisational
framework within which such people work is very different from the highly
bureaucratised world of the late twentieth century university. Organisational analysts such as
Heckscher (1994) believe that we are witnessing the emergence of new organisational forms - the post-
bureaucratic organisation. Heckscher suggests that the best analogies for post-bureaucratic
organisations are the organisation of science (where people and projects are selected with great
efficiency through formalised peer review processes) and the professions. Such organisations differ
from bureaucracies in that, whereas in a bureaucracy with its rational definition of office and hence
of
work, 'people are responsible only for their own jobs' (Heckscher, 1994: 20), the key to post-
bureaucratic organisations is 'an organisation in which everyone takes responsibility for the success
of
the whole' and in which the relationships between people 'are determined by problems rather than
predetermined by structures' (ibid, p. 24).
Modern telecommunication
and information technologies enable communication to take place in spite
of personal mobility, the distance between people, and time differences in their availability. In the
context of emerging third generation distance education systems and virtual universities and colleges,
the technological framework requires individuals to have access to the Internet from wherever they
happen to be, but most importantly from their homes. This becomes the platform upon which:
• students and teachers can communicate
with each other and with other students and other tutors,
one-to-one or within any defined group, on a global basis
• students and tutors can access
electronically stored resources on a global basis. .
• students and tutors can access
information, advice, and administrative and support services
Developments in telecommunications
and computing thus offer opportunities for networked
interaction. Building on traditional academic values that mesh well with the values of post-bureaucratic
organisations, this provides the basis for the emergence of a new kind of university. Borrowing from
Heckscher's preferred term, the interactive organisation (Heckscher, 1994: 24), I call this the
interactive university.
We can begin to see
inklings of what might be in some of the new computer mediated communications
(CMC) based courses that are coming on stream, and in organisations like the Global Network
Academy (providing postgraduate courses over the Internet), the Diversity University (a MOO or
Multi-user Object Oriented based system delivering courses and providing an environment for informal
personal interaction), and the GENII Lab School (an on-line teacher training centre). Such systems link
CMC- based environments with electronic library environments providing access to course materials.
CMC provides a basis for interactive communication between students, those who are tutoring them,
those who create the learning materials, and those who manage and administer the system. But there
are other changes of a structural kind: The Global Network Academy initially had a very small core of
permanent staff who took the decisions while depending on volunteers to offer courses based on
hypertext-based libraries accessed through the Internet, with an on-line library and an index of experts
whom students could consult. In late 1994, however, GNA was re-organised into a consortium of
different schools - chartered on a variety of administrative and financial platforms (Hall, 1994).
Clear organisational
patterns are hard to detect. However, the real key to progress may be in the
emergence of new financial relationships between teacher, student and university. What follows is
speculative - a vision of what an interactive university might look like. The technology is important
because it provides a framework for the rest. Individual academics can create an electronic course and
put it up on the Internet. The global reach of the Net means that they can live at a distance from the
university. In other words, just as first and second generation distance education liberated students
from the need to live near the university, but required academics to continue to do so if they were
to
play a significant part in the development of courseware and the governance of the institution, so now
third generation distance education systems enable academics to break away from the university.
The fact that the individual
academic can put their own course up on the Internet is also important.
Potentially, we have the modern day equivalent of the twelfth century goliardic or wandering scholar,
a
global artisan in the knowledge industry, able to publish on the Internet and attracting students who
wish to learn from them. Moreover, like their forebears who saw themselves as artisans in workshops
for ideas, so academics exploiting the Internet can operate in a society geared to consumerism.
The main difficulties
faced by the academic were mentioned earlier: first, ensuring an organisational
framework that allows them freedom with remuneration; second, establishing their reputation; third,
publicising their course; and fourth, getting their course accredited. The first problem is the most
interesting one. One model might be to develop a community of partners (academics) licensed to teach
by the university. Students wishing to take their course would be assigned to them rather as lawyers
working in a chambers are given cases. The success of the 'chambers' as a whole would be everyone's
responsibility - thus reinforcing the post-bureaucratic nature of the relationship between the individual
teacher and the university. Within this structure the individual academic would then be responsible
for
preparing the students towards the examinations. Individual academics would have the flexibility to
choose how many courses they teach and how many students they support. This flexibility would
enable them to undertake other, perhaps more highly paid work as symbolic analysts (c.f. Reich, 1991:
177-9, 182- 4). This would have the advantage that their practical experience in the world of work would
feed back into their courses.
The other problems
are easily solved. While there will always be some academics who have an
international reputation and who are able to offer courses on the Internet and make money from it, the
majority will need to work through an organisation that can in essence guarantee their status as a
teacher. This would be solved by having a system that licenses someone as a university teacher. The
licence might be granted by the university itself or by an external authority. The third problem (of
publicising the course) is a technical matter, though the success in publicising courses may well
depend on the reputation of the university as much as that of the individual academic. The final
problem (of accreditation) also rests with the university as a body licensed to approve courses and
grant degrees.
The central function
of an interactive university is thus to provide would-be learners with opportunities
to engage in the study of courses towards a degree and to validate their learning. Many students,
perhaps the majority, will be in employment and highly mobile and they will expect to be able to
continue to study when they move within a jurisdiction or between jurisdictions. Computer Mediated
Communications-based courses using the new Knowledge Media will support these students on a
global basis. The global reach of such courses will enable universities (as many already do) to enrol
students irrespective of the jurisdiction where they are resident. Because students may wish to move
between universities, carrying their accumulated credits with them, there will be pressure for regional
(e.g. Latin American) and global Credit Accumulation and Transfer (CAT) schemes. There will be some
difficulties in doing this, because of the number and range of quality of institutions, and so there
will be
an increasing number of national and international validating bodies that help (enable) students to
package their credits into meaningful awards of assured quality. Whether an institution's credits are
recognised or not by a validating body may become a significant factor in access to the global
education market.
Key to this structure
is the way in which academics are paid and the way in which resources are
generated. The final section looks at this issue.
.
Financing the
interactive university
In the scenario outlined
above the university is organised not so much around physical resources and
their use, but around information, linking the progenitors of information with those that want to use
it.
The ethereal assets of the university and of its teachers become very important. For the purposes of
definition
'an ethereal good
... is one that is not tangible, not expropriable and can be copied easily, at a cost that
is less than that of a bona fide version. .... It is not tangible, in that it cannot be touched. Nor
is it
expropriable in that, although I can get back what I gave you, you may have made copies: so just
getting back what I gave you is no insurance that you no longer have it. Such a good is clearly
appropriable, but never expropriable with certainty. It is these unusual characteristics that lead to
the
fundamental problems in dealing with ethereal goods, namely the problem of property rights and the
difficulty of evaluation' (Thompson, 1982: 16)
As Thompson remarks,
property rights and evaluation are closely linked: 'Property rights are only
important when there is some value in the property' (ibid, p. 16). In first and second generation distance
education systems the problem of ethereal goods did not arise because property rights over
information were closely tied to the physical entities (books, records) that carried the information.
It
was these physical embodiments that were assigned value. In effect the information went along free.
But technology, having initially made illegal copying much easier, has now cut the relationship
between information and any physical embodiment in its carrier. The problem is thus both to protect
what can be easily appropriated and to find ways of assigning value to it and collecting that value
when it is used.
The University of South
Australia exemplifies the problems (URL at January 1998:
http://www.unisa.edu.au/flc/). Given the restrictions imposed by current copyright law, the University
decided not to use third party material in its on-line courses because there can be no question of
individual students making a copy under 'fair dealing' provisions (Moran, 1996). But even if there were
no legal problems of this kind, there is a need to protect against indiscriminate copying and re-use
of
copyrighted materials. There are technical solutions to some of the issues raised: Protection can be
afforded through encryption (scrambling documents), stenanography (preserving their integrity), and
'watermarking' (building in electronic traces to trace infringement). Another issue will be to ensure
within an electronic environment that copyright owners are paid for use of their intellectual property.
Direct billing on access to materials will solve the second issue. Indeed, electronic billing and payment
methods will enable students to be charged for materials, ethereal good, and services, as the occasion
demands.
What is interesting
about these developments is that the money flows from the user to the originator of
the information, goods or service. In an electronic interactive university this would be the equivalent
of
the twelfth century intellectual being paid direct by his students. The University also provides services
- for example, brokering and examination services. These services need to be paid for too. Thus the
university needs to charge students for central services. But the teacher is also getting something
from
the university: support in the form of publicising courses and finding students. Academics might also
be 'charged' a percentage for these 'overhead' services. The various services would be paid for as they
are consumed, with money flowing electronically from the student to the academic or the university,
and even from the academic partner to the university 'chamber', as appropriate. These arrangements,
once in force, would enable a much looser, interactive structure to develop. Academics would have
regained greater control over their work. Both teachers and students might be involved part- time, with
other jobs and responsibilities. Expansion and contraction would be easier.
Administratively, then,
the university becomes a broker between the academic and the would be
learner. Its functions would be:
• to have an efficient (low cost),
effective (responsive) logistical system that responds to would-be
learners. Telephone and computer based services and advice lines will need to respond on a global
basis, 24 hours a day.
• to identify and license
teachers.
• to act as a broker between students
interested in studying a subject, and academics willing to teach
a subject - in effect putting the one in touch with the other.
• to examine the students, or to
put students forward for public examinations.
• to provide a hub around which
academics may work.
Could it happen? The
technology is available. What is needed is the commitment to create the
organisational structures, payment structures, and relationships, that will enable the post-bureaucratic
university corporation to emerge. Such structures, reflecting the enabling function of the underlying
technologies, and based upon a commitment to establish and maintain new social forms within the
university, will be well suited to meeting the lifelong learning needs of the labour force, and most
particularly those of highly mobile knowledge workers.
Even within the highly
industrialised Open University, there are pointers to a way forward: the
University's PGCE programme can be deconstructed into the constituent relationships of a student, a
tutor, a licensing authority (the University), a school (within which the student does his or her
practice), and a school-based mentor for the trainee. Students have to build up their portfolios, which
are then assessed. In the National Extension College, students preparing themselves to take a London
External degree can ask for tutorial support, which they pay for as they use it. Students and tutors
negotiate the subject of the assignment. The College's job is to validate the tutor and put him or her
in
touch with the student. If the payment routes are not yet directly from the student to the tutor, some
of
the other ingredients in a networked approach to education are slotting into the place. Such models
retain the advantages of flexibility that distance education has for the consumer, together with the
freedom to opt out and find another teacher, yet put the academic back in control of the management
of
their relationships with their students. If the prospects of employment are uncertain, the conditions
within which that work is exercised must be better than the alternative vision of a university articulated
by Ritzer (1998) in his most recent book, The McDonaldization thesis, where he discusses universities
within the context of the wider post-modern, consumerist, society. Universities, he says, are means
to
educational consumption (Ritzer, 1998: 151). He cites Levine (1993: 4) to the effect that all students
want
of higher education 'is simple procedures, good service, quality courses, and low costs'. In responding
to such demands, universities will, he suggests, learn most by looking for answers among those who
have successfully responded to consumerism (p. 153). This will include cost cutting (to reduce costs
to
students), the removal of barriers to success (though grade inflation and dumbing down in order to
reduce failure), decentralisation to satellite campuses (to be nearer the student), use of technology
(to
provide home-based education) (Ritzer, 1998: 154-57). Credentialling will become much more important
as a result, since it is this that will distinguish one consumer from another. To ensure uniformity
across
the satellite campuses, professors will be scripted and course content pre-determined. Courses will
respond to student needs and wants, and not be part of a wider canon built into a curriculum (p. 158).
Within this scenario, 'those who teach at McUniversity and its satellites are unlikely to be full- time
tenured faculty members ... Most will be part- timers brought in to teach a course or two. Their pay,
like
that of employees of fast-food restaurants, will be low and their benefits few, if any' (ibid.: 158).
Virtual universities
such as the Teacher's University, the Virtual On-line University, and the Mind
Extension University are now being set up. Many of these approaches will also be McDonaldized. But
there is a choice: it is possible to devise approaches based around constructivist models that will
enable academics and students jointly to construct a curriculum and a path through learning, and that
will leave the academic and the student in control of the relationship. The key will be to keep it small
in
order to maintain personal relationships between teacher and students. And herein lies a potential
problem: such systems are likely to cost more because labour will be (relatively) expensive.
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In
Alan and Greville?s discussion of possible future innovations in higher learning and
distance education they include collaborations:
Greville writes: "b. amalgamations and mergers and collaborative ventures are
much more important now (though they seem still to be unstable - see some of the
other postings we have had). Collaboration though is a competitive strategy."
I would be interested to hear more about actual collaborations that are successful and what
appears to be working for them and what does not. Thomas spoke a bit about the rates of
exchange effecting salaries, more work less money.
And Alan wrote: "Eventually, organizations will emerge that will provide (or at least
certify) academic credit for courses taken at accredited institutions anywhere in the
country, continent, or the world."
Is this another layer of administration or third party certification? And who and how will this
become acceptable? Who is the degree from? Is it true collaboration?
Here in the US back in the late '70's and early '80's there was a movement in State
Universities to encompass all state funded schools under one umbrella -- a "State University
System" -- or more irreverently called --Super U's. These were supposed, on a state level,
to provide students with the ability to access campuses for their strengths. Core courses
were to be designed and developed at one source and presented in a uniform manner.
Most administrative and support facilities were to reside under one roof, thus creating
needed economies for the state funding. Although most state systems still have remnants of
this process it has been disintegrating from the early '90's on. Collaboration and credit
exchanges were never considered quite equal. Even with in the same system collaborations
were not particularly successful.
Perhaps there will be a point where market demand will drive CBUs, DMUs and DTUs to
work with each other, but I see many problems in the way. First there needs to be a shift in
society that removes the influence in branding and then there will need to be a change of
thinking about or acquiescence to different levels of learning ( Rumble's level 1, level 2
etc.).
Is there anywhere a fully established open exchange collaboration (Yes I know UMUC and
Oldenburg - but that is for one program only) where courses at any or all schools are
equally acceptable? I thought that WGU was totally collaborative, but apparently not.
If there was, ideally this would allow institutions to develop their strengths and let their
lowest 20% go. However, as any good marketer knows about the 20:80 rule -- The
moment the bottom 20 is removed there is a change in dynamics that alters the successful
20. This doesn't mean not to lose the slow performers, it means there is a need to be agile
enough to react to the changes.
Tea
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Cynthea:
while drinking early morning tea, though today I only started at 6am, not 5 like other days.
Well, its Saturday so get a lie-in.
I would have thought that the best example of a successful collaboration was the National
Technological University, which links companies (who enrol their staff as students), the
NTU headwquarters, the most prestigious engineering schools in US universities, and the
professors who work in them. Everyone gains something, and that is why the system
works. When Europeans tried to emulate the NTU they failed - probably because the
national differences in HE structures made it more difficult to work than the more or less
common US credit structures.
You might like to skim the attached paper, Cynthea, which mentions consortia etc. Of
course its a snapshot in time. Its reference is given below and this version may vary a little
from the printed version.
Credit transfer: most institutions that give the degree demand that a proportion of the
courses are their courses - say 60 to 70% at least, including most of the high level courses.
So its a limited success only for flexibility.
Greville
ORGANISATIONAL MODELS
FOR DISTANCE AND OPEN LEARNING
Greville Rumble
The Open University,
UK
Colin Latchem
Open learning and
educational development consultant, Australia
INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines
the strengths and weaknesses of various organisational models used to provide
distance and open learning and why these have emerged. It concludes by looking into the future and at
the emergent structures for e-distance education.
ALL ON ITS OWN -
the single mode option
In 1987, Perry and
Rumble wrote A Short Guide to Distance Education and one of its chapters dealt
with the question, ‘Which organisational model to choose’. Life was simpler then, and only
three
possibilities were considered:
The authors concluded
that:
-
single-mode distance
education systems ‘have a first loyalty to distance education’, battle against
scepticism to achieve real standards and professionalism in distance education, are expensive to
develop and therefore need to be big to achieve economies of scale;
- dual-mode institutions in theory offer courses
of exactly the same standards on- and off-campus,
but in practice have to overcome many difficulties to do this (not least the lower level of interest
that academics often demonstrated towards the demands of their off-campus students, and the
lower status accorded the distance operation within a traditional institution); and
- consortia ‘are a splendid idea which all
too seldom work in practice’.
The arguments for single-mode
distance education institutions stem partly from the history of distance
education, partly from beliefs in their inherent superiority, and partly from arguments about economies
of scale.
The first distance
teaching organisations – the commercial correspondence schools dating from about
1840 when Pitman’s correspondence school for the teaching of shorthand was established – were
single-mode institutions, created to provide training for those entering the expanding commercial and
business world of 19th century Europe and America. The correspondence schools were run essentially
as businesses and many pursued profit at the expense of quality. Students paid all or most of their
fees
up-front, tutors were paid on a piecework basis, and high dropout rates coupled with up-front
payments maximised profits from what the industry called ‘drop-out money’ (Noble, 2000: 15). Of
course, some commercial colleges were concerned to deliver on quality, and by the early 20th century
voluntary regulation came into being with the foundation of the National University Extension
Association (1915) and National Home Study Association (1926) in the US and similar bodies in
Europe. However, poor quality ‘correspondence education’ gave the business a bad name and
as a
consequence, when the British Open University was first proposed, it met with considerable scepticism
(Perry, 1976: 18-9, 32-3) as did the start-up of, for example, the Bangladesh Open University (Shamsher
Ali, 1997: 153) and the Open University of Hong Kong (Boshier & Pratt, 1997).
Concern for the quality
of single-mode institutions leads some to suggest that standards are better
maintained within a dual-mode setting, as discussed below. However, in a number of jurisdictions
across the globe, as for example Perry (1976: 5) noted of the United Kingdom, and Leibbrandt (1997:
102) of the Netherlands, traditional institutions were originally extremely reluctant to teach adults
(one
of the main markets for distance education), or engage with distance education. Setting up new
institutions thus proved to be an effective strategy for bypassing intransigent traditional institutions,
although their success was always dependent upon strong political backing (Dodd & Rumble, 1984).
As Hanna & Associates (2000: 134) observes, most of the open universities were established by
national governments to serve goals that were more immediately political and overtly developmental
than the other models of open and distance education. For example, establishing a single-mode open
university:
-
does away with the
need to push change through traditional institutions which, as Lewis (1994),
Bashir (1998), Lueddeke (1998), and Ellis (2000) show, requires
institutions to rethink their priorities
and change their cultures;
- means that there is no ‘wasteful duplication
of effort and resources through co-operation and
collaboration’, which was the concern of the British Columbia Minister of Education when setting
up the Open Learning Institute of BC (Ellis, 1997: 87);
- means that there is no need to ‘bring
together institutions differing in so many ways in their
traditions, regional interests and political experiences under a national umbrella organisation which
still has to be tried and tested’ – a course of action that the Minister of Higher Education
and
Research, in the government of North-Rhine-Westphalia that set up the FernUniversität, did not
believe could work (Peters, 1997: 57).
Throughout the 1970s
and early 1980s, writers such as Peters (1973: 310; 1983), Perry (1976: 55), Daniel
and Smith (1979: 64), and Snowden and Daniel (1980), argued that the administrative structures of
conventional institutions were not best suited for the development and management of distance
education. The view was that distance education systems involved a number of quasi- industrial
processes and that the best results would be obtained where the corporate culture encouraged
adherence to production schedules, and where academics and managers understood the very different
cost structures and hence budgetary needs of distance teaching methods. Strong arguments were also
advanced that the needs of part-time, adult students were better served through institutions teaching
wholly at a distance. The marginalisation of distance education students in dual-mode institutions lent
support to this view, as evidenced by, e.g., the Indian Correspondence Directorates (Singh, 1979: 87),
University of Zambia (Siaciwena, 1988: 201), and the US experience (Hall, 1991: 31). These arguments
were also bolstered by the success of the UK Open University, whose much evaluated system showed
that a dedicated distance education system could deliver high quality teaching materials, responsive
and effective student support, and excellent administration and logistics.
The case for separatism
was further strengthened by arguments based upon the distinctive technology
of distance education. In the 1970s and 1980s, the argument that distance education was a
technologically based form of education with a distinct pedagogy was easier to make than today with
the mix of on- and off-campus resource-based independent and collaborative learning. Since then the
expansion of higher education, the failure of governments to provide commensurate resources, and the
consequent scramble to compete for new fee-for service and national and international markets, has led
‘traditional’ institutions to adopt approaches that lessen the amount of direct contact between
teacher
and student and erode the difference between the ‘on-campus’ and ‘off-campus’ learning
experience.
Single-mode institutions
have one distinct advantage, and that is their capacity to be very large indeed.
All of the large-scale dedicated distance education systems, from India’s National Open School
to the
‘mega-universities’– single- mode distance teaching universities with more than 100,000
enrolees
(Daniel, 1996) such as China’s TV University System, the University of South Africa, Turkey’s
Anadolu University, The Centre National d’Enseignement à Distance in France and the UK Open
University – aim for economies of scale. However, such economies can only be achieved by
restricting
the scope of the curriculum. Single-mode distance education systems cannot offer the variety of
courses provided by traditional institutions without:
Daniel (1996: 32; 1998)
makes the case for the long-term future of the ‘mega- universities’. He points out
that the eleven mega-universities, as a group, enrol 2.8 million students at an average institutional
cost
per student that is at most half that of the combined 182 higher education institutions in the UK (about
$10,000 per student with 1.6 million students) or the 3,500 institutions in the US higher education
system (about $12,500 with some 14 million students). However, this argument only applies to first
generation (correspondence- based) and second generation (multimedia-based) distance teaching
institutions which depend heavily upon materials-based learning, reduce the amount of direct contact
between students and teachers, and enrol large numbers of students. Such institutions can achieve
economies of scale because they replace traditional teaching methods, which are labour intensive (and
have low fixed costs but high variable cost structure), with a capital intensive form of teaching based
on high up-front investment in materials production but low teaching costs (giving high fixed and low
variable cost structure).
In the small-scale ‘cottage industry’ distance education found both in the public and private sectors, a
few people can create the materials, tutor the students, and manage the administration. However,
distance teaching institutions with significant curricula and large enrolments have to resort to
divisionalisation and division of labour. Generally, administration is hived off to become a separate
and
powerful function that regulates what academics do – with the aim of achieving economies of process
– while the traditional academic task of designing and teaching the course is divided
between those
who design and write the materials and those who tutor and assess the students. These differences are
then reflected in the employment patterns with administrative staff almost invariably on permanent full-
time contracts; the academics who create the material on full-time contracts (as at the UK Open
University) or short-term authorial contracts (as at the National Extension College, UK); and the tutors
on hourly contracts (for conducting tutorials), or piecework rates (for scripts marked). This reliance
on
part-time staff on the periphery is one of the key structural features of single-mode distance education,
and a key factor in its cost efficiency. It may also be its Achilles’ heel because such staff may
receive
inadequate induction and training in the institutional values and practices, have no control over the
course content and assessment criteria, and may not perceive themselves as stakeholders, all of which
factors impact on the quality of their work.
Until a few years ago,
all single-mode distance teaching institutions were ‘correspondence’ or
‘multimedia’ based. The advent of third generation systems, based on interactive technologies
offering
the possibility of much enhanced teacher-student contact at a distance, has changed the cost structure
of distance education, moving it from high fixed, low variable cost to a (potentially) high fixed, high
variable cost. Institutions adopting the new interactive online technologies are likely to see their
unit
costs increase sharply once their teachers demand wages in line with the amount of time they put into
supporting the students. The rise in unit costs pushes up the costs to the students, and/or of the
governmental subsidies. The former will run into elasticities of demand, the latter into pressures to
curb
subsidies – and the only way that this will be done will be to reduce the size of the institutions,
or to
find some very different structural solutions, some of which are discussed below.
The second problem
with Daniel’s thesis is that he compares the 'mega- universities' with systems that
are still highly traditional in their teaching methods. If the traditional system were to become fully
re-
engineered, adopting open and flexible learning methods to teach both off-campus and on-campus
students, the comparison might be somewhat different. In the absence of proper research to inform
decision makers, the better option is scepticism, not least because the studies that we do have suggest
that the adoption of flexible learning and independent study within traditional institutions has brought
unit costs down sharply. Scott (1997: 38), for example, points out that in the UK:
. . . the massification of British higher education is demonstrated [by]
the sharp reduction in unit
costs. Overall productivity gains of more than 25 per cent have been achieved since 1990 . . .
This pattern, which exactly matches the expansion of student numbers, closely follows the cost
curves in other countries where mass higher education systems developed earlier than in
Britain. It supports the claim that mass systems have a quite different economy from that of élite
systems. (our italics)
One of the reasons
why first and second generation single-mode distance education systems have
been so successful in massifying education and reducing unit costs has been their adoption of
industrialised approaches to education. The thesis that distance education is an industrialised form
of
education was first advanced by Otto Peters who, drawing on Weber’s concept of bureaucracy, argued
that it was a highly rationalised form of education involving mechanisation, standardisation, the use
of
capital-intensive technologies, centralised planning and control, division of labour, reduction in the
autonomy of the academic producers, and an objectivisation of the production process leading to
increased alienation (see, for example, Peters, 1973; 1983).
The bureaucratisation
of education is, however, by no means restricted to distance education: it is now
endemic in traditional campus-based systems (c.f. Ritzer, 1993, 1998). Ritzer holds that in the United
States education, including higher education, has been marked by ‘the culmination of a series of
rationalisation processes that have been occurring throughout the twentieth century’ that are best
exemplified in the practices of the McDonalds fast food chain (Ritzer, 1993: 31-2). He points to:
Thus education –
including distance education – is perceived to have succumbed to a
characteristically 20th century form of administration based upon large-scale hierarchies
and large-scale
mass production, both of which are encompassed within the concept of Fordism (Campion, 1995). Some
distance educators have been deeply critical of the implications of Fordism for distance education,
namely, the increased administrative control and disempowerment and deskilling of academic staff (see,
for example, Campion, 1991; Campion and Renner, 1992). Fordist structures are also seen as resulting
in
low levels of product variety and process innovation (Campion and Renner, 1992: 9).
Given such criticism,
it is not surprising that post-Fordist models involving product innovation,
process variability, and labour responsibility have proved attractive to academics, both as a means
of
retaining autonomous control over their courses (ibid.: 11), and providing a rapid response to the
demands of the consumer. Third generation distance education, giving power to the academic to
control and change course content and pace, and providing a more constructivist learning
environment, approaches a post-Fordist ideal by reducing ‘the need for reliance upon bureaucratic
structures and practices’ (Campion, 1995: 211). These ideas will be explored further below.
Locating DISTANCE
EDUCATION within The existing institution – the dual-mode option
There are basically
two ways in which dual-mode institutions can teach both on-campus and off-
campus students: through asynchronous ‘correspondence’ methodologies using print,
correspondence, multimedia and the Internet/Web (which can encourage autonomous and
constructivist learning), and by extending the traditional classroom by using face-to-face instruction
via satellite TV and other connective technologies (which tends to reinforce teacher-centred
approaches).
If some jurisdictions
have found the single-mode approach more appropriate, others – for example,
Australia and Sweden (see Dodd and Rumble, 1984) – believe that the dual-mode approach providies a
more satisfactory outcome. The first American university to widen access through an extension service
using correspondence methods was the Illinois Wesleyan University which in 1874 introduced
undergraduate and graduate courses at a distance. The real expansion, however, began in the 1890s
following the leadership of the University of Chicago. Other US institutions – notably the state
universities – followed Chicago’s lead, and by 1919, 73 colleges and universities were offering
distance
education courses (Noble, 2000: 15). Similar developments occurred in Australian, Canadian and Soviet
higher education. At the schools level, correspondence education was also introduced Europe,
Australia, Canada and the Soviet Union to support home-based learners or learners in small
disadvantaged schools, typically in remote and rural areas.
The quality of these
programmes was again a matter for concern. In the US, although the universities
were not-for-profit organisations, they were caught in the same economic web as the commercial
colleges, so that:
Before long, with a degraded product and a dropout rate as bad as the commercial
firms, they
had come to depend on dropout money. At the end of the 1920s, … Abraham Flexner, a
distinguished and influential observer of higher education, excoriated the universities for
commercial preoccupations, for compromising their independence and integrity, and
abandoning their unique and essential function of disinterested critical and creative enquiry
(Noble, 2000: 15, reporting Flexner, 1930).
This reads like a critique
of the university of the late 20th century (see for example, Halsey, 1995; Smyth,
1995; Barnett and Griffin, 1997; Readings, 1997; Barnett, 2000). However, it was essentially a criticism
of
the values of the departments set up within the universities in the earlier decades of the 20th
century to
extend the teaching and learning beyond the physical boundaries of the institutions, and this view has
never been totally countered. According to Noble (2000: 15), some 30 years after Flexner’s criticism,
‘the General Accounting Office was warning Vietnam veterans not to waste their federal funds on
such
[distance education] courses’. More recently, Perraton (2000: 199) reminds us that while distance
education has had a measure of success, a harsher view is of an approach to education that is
‘regarded as a second-rate system used to offer a shadow of education while withholding its
substance’. Perraton ends his survey of distance education in the developing world:
Paraphrasing Gandhi, my answer to the question ‘can we make open and
distance learning as
good as conventional education?’ will be ‘I think it would be a good idea’. (Perraton,
2000: 200)
The different approaches
to the organisation of dual-mode systems have been exactly this – attempts
to make distance education as good as conventional education. Distance education programmes could
be set up by individual departments (as happened at the University of Waterloo in Canada) or by the
institution as a whole. In the latter case, a central administrative unit might be set up to co-ordinate
the
distance teaching activities of a number of departments – as at the University of Zambia and the
University of New England – while in other cases, a separate unit was established to both teach
and
administer the distance programme, as occurred at the University of Queensland, Deakin University
(until 1982), and in the Indian Correspondence Directorate system. This second model, isolating the
distance system from the mainstream university, tended to reinforce the second class status of distance
education; in India, for example, the Correspondence Directorates were accorded low status (Singh,
1979: 87). Integration along the lines of the ‘New England model’ was seen as the solution
to this
problem (Smith, 1979: 200). However, this model has also been criticised because it ‘tends to transfer
an
internal teaching model to the external teaching situation’ (Ortmeier, 1982). Certainly, integration
has
not always worked well. Siaciwena (1983: 70), reporting on problems encountered at the University of
Zambia where the New England structure was adopted, said that ‘the system of assigning the same
lecturers to both internal and external students has, in fact, been disadvantageous to the
correspondence programme’ because overworked staff tended to use the available time for internal
teaching and ignore external teaching, which they found exacting and difficult. Such negative attitudes,
he concluded, ‘undermine both the status of correspondence education and the very concept of parity
of standards’ (ibid.: 71).
The integrated model
developed at New England nevertheless retained a degree of separation,
inasmuch as the external students were administered through a separate unit. However, when in 1982
Deakin University adopted the integrated model it integrated the administrative services as well as
the
academic into the mainstream structures of the university. Although this change was criticised by
those who thought ‘that off-campus students need a special unit of their own because “out
of sight,
out of mind” can all too easily become true’ (Jevons, 1984: 27), the fully integrated approach
worked
well. Nevertheless, it is worth interjecting a note of caution here: what works well in one setting
may
not do so elsewhere, and particularly where there is no shared vision and support from senior
management and distance learning is still perceived as marginal activity diverting scarce resources,
embraced by a few and threatening to time- honoured roles and practices.
These different approaches – once deeply contentious – are ceasing to have relevance in a number of
countries. In Australia, for example, as in many other countries, higher education has been confronted
with changes in student demographics, the need to provide for nontraditional students and demands
for expansion while experiencing severe cuts in government funding and staffing. The universities have
had to search for cheaper ways to teach these greater numbers of more diverse students and new ways
of generating income, and with the mainstreaming of technology into teaching and learning. The
answer has been seen to lie in flexible resource-based learning. Thus on-campus teaching has become
more distant – not in geographical terms, but in transactional terms which is a function of two
variables,
dialogue and structure (Moore, 1983:157). Dialogue involves interaction between the learner and the
teacher. First and second generation distance education systems, and de- humanised forms of
‘traditional’ higher education such as Ritzer’s McUniversity, permit little dialogue.
Structure is a
measure of the programme’s responsiveness to individual needs – what is sometimes referred
to in the
UK as ‘openness’ (Lewis, 1990). Fordist distance education systems – rationalised, predictable,
and
formalised – are highly structured. These features, combined as they are in first and second generation
distance education systems, make for highly distant systems.
The distance in these
systems can be mitigated to a degree by increasing the amount of dialogue and
loosening the regulatory tightness of the systems – but both of these strategies cost money. The
current tendency, as Scott (1997: 38) reminds us, is to drive down costs. Australian universities have
realised that they can reduce the costs of their on-campus provision by using the same methods and
materials to teach their on-campus and off-campus students, replacing the labour-intensive lecture with
the videotape, self-instructional text or Internet/Web material, and generally reducing the amount of
contact time between students and teachers (see Taylor and White, 1991). Moreover, they can do this
without cutting back on the curriculum. Rumble (1992) argued that this ability to deliver a wide
curriculum cheaply gave dual-mode institutions a distinct competitive advantage over their single-
mode counterparts. Renwick (1996: 59-60) suggests that traditional universities adopting dual-mode
approaches may have an edge on single-mode providers because ‘they already offer a wide range of
degrees and qualifications that rival open universities, could diversify at less cost, would not
necessarily have to rely on large numbers of enrolments to be viable as providers of distance
programmes, and could offer a wider range of options to potential students’. In the process, the
distinction between distance and traditional education, on-campus and off- campus, is blurred and
replaced by flexible learning.
Collaboration –
the networked alternative
As mentioned earlier,
Perry and Rumble (1987) suggested that consortia ‘are a splendid idea which all
too seldom work in practice’. This judgement derived from such ill-fated consortia as the University
of
Mid-America and the Universita’ a Distanza in Italy, both of which demonstrated the inherent
instability of collaborative ventures in distance and open education. On the other hand, the National
Technological University (NTU) in the US provided an early example of the potential benefits of
collaboration, even though it ultimately failed to achieve the graduate enrolments originally envisaged
(Cunningham et al, 2000). NTU was established as an independent university with its own accreditation
and degree programme authorisations and functions as an administrative and co-ordinating unit for the
engineering departments of over thirty participating universities that provide graduate and non-credit
distance education programmes for such major corporations as IBM and Motorola by means of live,
satellite video courses uplinked from the originating universities.
Today, the imperatives
of global competition, the opportunities provided by telecommunications, and
the need to leverage complementary strengths for greater market share and geographic coverage are
leading to an increasing number of inter-institutional, inter-sector and international consortia such
as:
-
The Scottish Knowledge
global higher education consortium, comprising Scotland’s fourteen
universities, Australia’s Edith Cowan University and other providers, plus News International plc,
which is targeting the corporate sector in the US, Middle East and Asia with its postgraduate
distance education courses.
-
Twelve UK, Dutch, Australian,
New Zealand, Canadian and American universities which have
formed a partnership with Hong Kong-based online education company NextEd and other
corporate providers to deliver programmmes into Asia, Europe and America.
-
The University of Melbourne-led
consortium, Universitas 21, which aims to establish itself as a
major force in international distance education by partnering with elite universities across the
globe and capitalising on their brandnames.
-
Illinois-based Internet
university UNEXT.com and its newly-created Cardean University which is
partnering with leading academic institutions such as Columbia Business School, Stanford
University, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, the
London School of Economics and Political Science, and other high-profile universities to sell
business-oriented online MBA courses to multinational and overseas corporations.
-
The National Universities
Degree Consortium (NUDC) which enables 11 accredited US
universities to collaborate in offering well over 1,000 certificate, baccalaureate degree and
graduate degree programmes, and facilitates substantial cooperation in
marketing and student
support.
-
The American Education
Consortium (ADEC) with sixty institutional and affiliate members sharing
in providing specialised courses and programmes, internationalising their offerings and
purchasing expensive satellite time (Poley, in press).
What
we are witnessing here is the internationalisation, competitiveness and commercialisation of
distance education leading to plethora of mating calls and courtship rituals between public and private
organisations as they reposition themselves in a volatile market and adapt to the realities of what
Alvin
Tofler (1980) calls the Third Wave economy. Tofler (ibid: 263) characterises the Second Wave
organisations as: large; hierarchical; permanent; top-down; mechanistic; and designed to deliver
repetitive products and decisions in a relatively stable environment. In the Third Wave economy,
dominated by service organisations and transformed by new technology, he suggests that there is
need for organisational systems rather than physical entities and that these new systems cut across
traditional managements, departments and functions and operate through a variety of networks,
partnerships and alliances which are interactive, interorganisational and international. These systems
are ‘messily open’ rather than ‘neatly closed’, comprising temporary configurations
of organisations
that share common interests that members join and leave as opportunities rise and wane.
Such network configurations
are not restricted to postsecondary education. India’s National Open
School (NOS), a system developed to serve educational dropouts and provide alternative foundation,
secondary and vocational education, operates through its headquarters in New Delhi, regional centres
in Calcutta for the eastern region, Pune for the western region, Hyderabad for the southern region,
Agra for the northern region, and Guwahati for the north- eastern region, and 1,000 centres, comprising
a mix of:
Only through such networking
and partnership can the NOS reach out to serve the huge numbers of
pupils who drop out from India’s 112,000 secondary schools. In 1998-1999, the
NOU had more than
500,000 students on its rolls and an annual enrolment of over 130,000, of which 35% was female.
Consortia,
partnerships, strategic alliances etc. are formed by educational, training and corporate
providers for a variety of reasons, but principally to:
share costs or spread
these over a larger number of students;
share courses, resources
and academic and commercial experience and expertise;
share risk;
form alliances with
potential competitors and interlopers;
achieve a competitive
edge and greater market share;
-
be fast to market or
cope with major market demand by joint course development and optimising
complementary strengths, as shown by Open Learning Australia in its earlier years of operation
(Latchem & Pritchard, 1994), and the joint Master’s in Social Work developed by Cleveland State
University and Akron University (Bates, 2000: 166).
- promote and operate credit transfer/recognition
of prior learning systems, as with the three
research universities and Open Learning Agency in British Columbia (Bates, 2000: 168), and the
Australian universities involved with Open Learning Australia;
- jointly market and broker programmes, as with
Open Learning Australia, California Virtual
University (Bates, 2000: 171-172) and Western Governors’ University (Cunningham et al. 2000:
46);
capitalise on partners’
knowledge of, and reputations in, local markets;
Establishing consortia,
partnerships and other such inter-dependent systems can be difficult and time-
consuming for institutions, sub-groups and individuals accustomed to more autonomous ways of
working and many consortia and alliances fail or fall short of achieving their potential. Neil (1981:
172-6)
and Moran and Mugridge (1993: xiii, 5, 9-10; 152-7) identify a range of factors which may inhibit
collaboration. These include: the existence of cultural differences between institutions; traditions
of
institutional autonomy; the ‘not invented here’ syndrome; poorly-constituted collaborative
objectives;
failure to articulate mutual benefits; lack of clarity in specifying the terms of an agreement; incompatible
organisational structures and administrative procedures; inadequate funds to implement agreements;
poor interpersonal relations; weak leadership; lack of real commitment on the part of one or more of
the
parties; and lack of trust.
Bates (2000: 176-179)
suggests that there are many potential advantages in collaboration and
partnerships but that these depend upon: defining the strategic benefits; picking the right and best
partners; gaining general support for the partnerships throughout the organisations; putting in the
time
and up- front investment; planning for both the short term and the long term; determining the relative
roles of the institutions and their sub-organisations; sound project management with clearly defined
tasks and agreed-on budgets; and formal agreements signed off by the CEOs. For institutions that can
face up to these challenges, there may well be exciting opportunities for collaboration and paradigmatic
change within the context of e-distance education.
CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES
AND CORPORATE TRAINING
Some US corporations,
for example, Aetna, American Express, Apple, Arthur Anderson, Cisco Systems,
Dow Chemicals, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, McDonald’s, Merrill Lynch, Motorola,
Sears, Sun Microsystems Inc, and Xerox, have centralised their training under one umbrella and
renamed these departments or divisions ‘corporate universities’. Despite their adopting such
a
nomenclature, few of these institutions have ever offered accredited degree programmes and of those
that have, several have either withdrawn from offering these or have merged them with the academic
programmes of more conventional universities.
Many academics scoff
at the idea of courses provided by the Disney University or McDonald’s
Hamburger University and question whether these institutions meet the standards required to call
themselves universities. However, the message from these corporate providers is loud and clear.
Learning is important, needs to be given greater prestige and demands major investment. The
corporate sector is in the market for programmes that are relevant to business efficiency and employee
performance, that acculturate the employees into the changing environment, that develop the
necessary skills and knowledge about the companies’ products and services, that help to recruit,
retain
and advance the best employees, and that are customised, flexible and appropriate to today’s fast-
moving, knowledge-based economy.
Meister (1998: ix)
observes that the corporate university is established ‘with the goal of achieving
tighter control and ownership over the learning process by more clearly linking learning programs to
real business goals and strategies’. Corporate University Xchange (2000:S2)
states that the
corporations have the money, subject matter expertise and speed-to-market mindset to create a
business in education. And an increasing number of these corporate providers are ceasing to be cost
centres and operating as profit centres, generating revenue by providing training for customers,
suppliers and distributors. The corporate university is largely an American phenomenon although the
UK- based Unipart Group of Companies has established a ‘Virtual U’ to deliver electronic courses
to its
10,000 employees which is part of the company’s ‘Unipart U’ corporate university. Some
corporations
such as IBM, Cisco Systems, Dell and Motorola, extend their training to employees throughout the
world through networked/satellite learning systems. Motorola University, for example, delivers Web-
based training to 142,000 employees in more than 70 countries and in 24 different languages.
Cunningham et al (2000:
15) conclude that while it is easy to dismiss the more extreme examples of
corporate universities, ‘organisations which seriously invest in their corporate programs have
much to
offer the traditional education sector in the professionalism with which they approach their teaching
and learning programs, and the funds expended on these activities’. Worldwide, major investments
are
being made in the corporate education market and flexible learning is increasingly seen as an integral
part of HRD or training policy. Another emerging model is the sector-based online university such as
the US Real Estate University (Cunningham et al, 2000: 40).
Many smaller companies
also provide Internet, Intranet or other forms of flexible training, targeting
priority areas of need and relating learning to the job. However, as Rowntree (1992: 23) notes, most
in-
company programmes may be ‘flexible’ in terms of time, place and pace, but are only ‘open’
to those
who are eligible for such training within their organisations, and typically offer little choice in
objectives, content, teaching and learning methods and assessment.
Some private sector
organisations offering their own courses seek credit from public sector institutions.
For example, Microsoft and Novell have contracted with Tucson’s Pima County Community College,
an
arrangement which also enables the students to have their fees paid for by their employers or receive
a
tax break on their fees (Bates, 1995: 173). The alternative model is for corporations to contract with
universities and colleges to provide courses matched
to their needs. Thompson (1998), identifies three
reasons for this seachange:
Thus, UK management
consultants Ernst and Young partner with Henley Management College to offer
their staff worldwide MBA and PhD programmes in business and leadership, an arrangement which
both parties regard as mutually beneficial. Ernst and Young see it as a means of accumulating
intellectual capital, retaining staff, and maintaining competitive advantage. Henley Management
College staff look upon it as an opportunity to gain first- hand knowledge of the issues currently
confronting the corporate sector (White, 1999). And at the national level, through its Green Paper, ‘The
Learning Age’, the UK Government has established a major public-private partnership, the University
for Industry (UfI). UfI has not been conceived as a single, self- contained institution
such as the UK
Open University, but again as a system, drawing upon a wide range of educational and training
providers to offer courses and programmes which stimulate and meet demand for lifelong learning
among businesses and individuals through online delivery into homes, workplaces and 400 ‘learndirect
centres’.
Such developments are
also being transacted through separate for-profit entities attached to existing
universities and colleges, an arrangement which again may give rise to conflict within the academic
culture of the more traditional institutions.
THE NEW KIDS ON
THE BLOCK – FOR-PROFIT INSTITUTIONS
For-profit distance
teaching institutions are again largely an American phenomenon although this
model seems likely to be replicated elsewhere across the globe. The prime US examples are University
of Phoenix (UoP), DeVry Inc, Strayer Education Inc and Sylvan Learning Systems Inc, all of which are
dual-mode. UoP now has the largest enrolment of any US private nonprofit or for-profit university
(Sperling and Tucker, 1997: 36). Its undergraduate and graduate enrolments in the US, Puerto Rico and
elsewhere have reached 65,000. UoP operates primarily through a network of learning centres but about
10% of its students are enrolled in UoP Online Division programmes which generate US$12.8 million a
quarter. DeVry, through its undergraduate DeVry Institutes and postgraduate division, Keller Graduate
School of Management, also remains committed to teaching through local outlets but is positioning
itself in the asynchronous online market. Strayer has an aggressive strategy of programme and
campus
replication across the US, but in 1999 opened an online division called Strayer Online. Sylvan Learning
Systems Inc provides personalised instructional services to students of all ages and skill levels
through a network of over 640 Sylvan Learning Centers and adult professional education and training
through its Caliber Learning Network.
For-profit institutions
arise through a combination of:
-
dissatisfaction with
the responsiveness of traditional institutions to the professional and
vocational needs of working adults who require convenience, year-round compressed courses,
and individually-tailored and individually-satisfying flexible learning;
- recognition of the enormous potential of the
education market (US$772 billion per year in the US or
10% of the country’s gross domestic product and the fifth largest service sector export in
Australia);
- e-commerce entrepreneurism.
The
major US for-profits are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Cunningham et al (2000: 16)
observe that such institutions have as their primary goal profit from selling education and training
as a
service, are run strictly according to strict business principles, offering niche client groups a limited
range of educational ‘products’, and in Meister’s (1998: 231) terms, focus on ‘convenience,
self-service
and uniformity’.
Hanna & Associates (2000:139-140) suggests that these for-profit universities
are important in the mix
of higher education models because they:
Such institutions are
borderless and have the potential to present formidable competition to the
traditional universities. Cunningham et al (op cit: xvii-xviii) suggest that these new providers are
not
bound by the norms and ideals of traditional higher education such as collegial governance, linked
research and teaching, or academic autonomy and control,
and (op cit: 4) adopt a strategic and
systematic approach to the professionalism of education and training that does more than pay lip
service to the rhetoric of being a ‘learning organisation’. White (1999) suggests that
these institutions
‘have the advantage of being able to hire and fire managers and teachers and offer them a share
of the
profits’, and notes that Wall Street analysts eye the
multi-billion education sector as ripe for investment
because ‘it is seen as a low-tech industry managed by amateurs’. However, the for-profits
have fared
poorly on the NYSE over the past few years and there are still serious questions about their quality,
governance and treatment of staff (for example, see Cunningham et al., 2000).
Is there anyone
OUT there? virtual INSTITUTIONS
The ‘virtual institution’
has become the metaphor for online enrolment, distribution, tuition and
administration. Cunningham et al (2000: 16) suggest that the virtual institution can be conceived of
in
two ways:
-
as an institution which
offers all of the conventional university services via information and
communications technology (for example, NYUOnline or Jones International University, America’s
only accredited private online university); or
- as a ‘hollow’ organisation which
unbundles services conventionally provided in-house and
subcontracts these to other organisations (for example, Western Governors University, brokering
competency-based programmes).
In a third model, the
institution acts on behalf of a number of different providers (for example, the
Californian Virtual University providing online catalogues and courses on behalf of its partners, and
Britain’s emerging e-university which is envisaged as doing something similar for the entire UK
higher
education sector, while retaining the right to refuse to accept courses on quality grounds (see O’Shea,
2000: 10).
Web searches will yield
a number of ‘virtual’ or online institutions – for example, in the US, Athena
University, Virtual Online University and Magellan; in Malaysia, Universiti Telekom (Multimedia
University) and Universiti Tun Abdul Rasak; and in Korea, the Korea Virtual University Consortium.
However, Cunningham et al (op cit.) found that despite all the rhetoric and hype, these institutions
remain embryonic. Farrell (1999: 2-3) observed that the term ‘virtual’ is used broadly and
indiscriminately, that there few examples of virtual institutions or campuses in the purest sense, that
development is still experimental, unfocused, not necessarily matched to clientele learning needs, and
that those using the Web, do so as a publishing medium rather than an interactive tool. However, he
records a great deal of interest and activity in this area from four different sources:
Farrell (op cit: 8)
suggests that there is also evidence through SchoolNet initiatives in Canada, South
Africa and India and similar developments elsewhere across the globe that virtual education models will
start to pervade primary and secondary education. However, here the technology may be used either to
support the teacher, enable the teacher to teach across distances or networked schools, or deliver
information, knowledge and learning opportunities directly to the learner.
GAZING INTO THE
CRYSTAL BALL
The development of
third generation distance education opens up new prospects for structuring
distance education systems. The models described above are fluid, transmuting and converging. The
question is, can new structures be established that will enable distance educators to make use of the
new technologies to provide cheap, mass educational access or, on the other hand, profitable global
enterprises? Like it or not, higher education has now been thoroughly ‘corporatised’ and is
perceived
as a mass business, with private investment from firms such as Merrill Lynch, Banc One, and a range
of
venture capitalists only likely to increase. Oblinger (2001) observes that e- learning has been described
as the next Internet ‘Killer App’ (c.f. Peterson et al, 1999) and that net-generation companies,
the new
providers, global knowledge portals such as 1 to 80.com in Singapore, and global consortia such as
Cenquest (Giegerich, 2000) are transforming open and distance learning. She foresees even more
change in the wake of mergers and acquisitions among existing e-distance businesses, and by media,
publishing and communications businesses currently outside distance education. Such consolidation
will, she believes, ‘provide scale, and in education, scale matters … [enabling] leverage
for research and
development, curriculum development, sales efforts and overall operating expenses’ (Oblinger, 2001:
X).
The costs of online
education are currently being investigated but it is already clear that the costs of
putting suitable materials on-line may be very high, while the costs of supporting students online look
as if they are going to cause the unit costs of distance education to increase substantially (Rumble,
1999). Against this, e-commerce practices such as online registration are likely to bring some costs
down. Nevertheless, the extensive adoption of online learning by single-mode distance education
systems is likely to push their unit (and total) costs up, thus undermining their efficiency relative
to
traditional educational systems. Dual-mode systems may, however, be able to use online teaching as a
substitute for face-to-face contact without affecting their overall cost structures too much –
particularly
if they also eschew the development of materials in favour of using pre-existing textbooks, and if they
keep course numbers down. The initial thrust within e-distance education may well be, therefore, to
find
less expensive ways of undertaking routine operating transactions, while the greatest overall success
may come within dual-mode systems. If the latter is true, then single-mode institutions are going to
face
greatly increased and very cost effective competition.
Technology and e-business
approaches make it possible for integrated processes of open and distance
education to be disaggregated into their constituent parts: curriculum development; content
development; learner acquisition and support; learning delivery; assessment and advising; articulation;
and credentialing. These processes can then be managed by different organisations.
Conversely, e-distance
education may enable academics to regain control over the teaching-learning
process, provided that:
The emergence of such ‘reaggregated’ jobs could parallel the 12th century emergence of the intellectual
– one ‘whose profession it was to think and share their thoughts’ (Le Goff, 1993: 1)
and who taught in
schools that ‘were workshops out of which ideas, like mechandise, were exported’ (ibid.: 62).
During the
12th century these intellectual artisans began to organise themselves within corporations or colleges
of
masters and students, out of which emerged the universities in the 13th century. The salaries of these
masters derived from two sources – the students, and stipends or scholarships from private
benefactors, and civil and public organisations. Masters who could live off what their students paid
them were free of temporal and ecclesiastical powers and private patrons.
It is perhaps too fanciful
to predict that the Internet/Web will enable the 21st century ‘master’ to sell
his
or her wares in the e-marketplace, and be paid directly by the learner. With the possible exception
of a
few international ‘gurus’, most teachers will need to operate within a framework which advertises
their
availability, assures potential students of their worth, and provides acceptable and transferable
certification and accreditation. Once accepted into such a framework, it will be in the interests of
these
teachers to ensure that the organisation as a whole succeeds. Systems ‘in which everyone takes
responsibility for the success of the whole’ is the key characteristic of what Hechscher (1994:
24) refers
to as post-bureaucratic organisations. Applied to third generation e-distance education, this would
mark a significant departure from the way in which first and second generation systems have been
organised. The function of the institution would be to provide learner acquisition, quality assurance,
articulation, and credentialing. The academics’ function would be to develop and deliver the courses
and support and assess the learners via the Internet/Web. Global alliances, and globalised credit
accumulation and transfer schemes between organisations of a similar standard, would allow for the
emergence of multi-cultural partnerships of globally distributed teachers serving students across a
borderless world. Such organisations might be so re-engineered as to allow academics to be paid
directly by their students, the university to be reimbursed for the registration and recognition of
their
learning (and possibly levy a charge on the academics for their continued recognition as accredited
teachers) and grant academics the freedom to regulate their student load to suite their needs and
combine this work in other fields or for other organisations.
Having opened up these
possibilities, Rumble (1998: 142) asks whether such models could happen.
There is no clear answer to this – but what is clear is that the field of distance education is
changing
and will change even more as new players enter the field, exploiting the possibilities of e-commerce,
and
that time- honoured structures and systems may wither or be swept away.
CONCLUSIONS
All of the organisational
structures described above have worked in particular cases; and all have been
shown to have advantages and disadvantages. There can be no absolute policy guidelines, although it
seems inevitable that most traditional institutions will become involved with mixed-mode provision, and
that there will be an increase in alliances and partnerships, some of which will transient. The
international agency offering community-based open learning programmes in HIV/AIDS awareness in
developing countries will almost inevitably need to work in collaboration with various health,
education, government, community and telecommunications organisations. The national government
setting up an open schooling system will need to involve a range of partners, including the existing
schools, to maximise scarce resources. College and university educators and trainers,
telecommunications and media providers, publishers and the corporate sector will endeavour to capture
each other’s primary strengths. However, each of these structures has economic consequences which
will in turn determine what works best in given circumstances. It seems likely that the development
of e-
distance education will significantly affect the way in which distance education is structured. The
one
certainty facing policy makers is that the environment is changing, and that this will fundamentally
impact on the structures through which distance education is delivered.
The knowledge economy
demands lifelong learning and the private sector is assuming a growing
responsibility for this. There are calls for significant educational reform and greater accountability
and
an increasing number of institutions are now reinventing or realigning themselves to expand and
enhance their education and training operations. Some will opt to maintain a local or national focus;
others will aim to become global and multinational; most, if not all, will seek commercial benefit from
their operations. The internationalisation of education is really only at what Davis and Botkin (1995)
define as stage one: export, or stage two: setting up partnerships and in- country development and
delivery. The greater vision will be realised when institutions achieve stage three – truly two-way
exchange and development of programmes and services through borderless education.
All organisations have
lifecycles which proceed from startup and experimentation to maturity and
aging, during which process they become increasingly rigid and entrenched in their organisation and
operations. It is yet to be seen whether the institutions emerging from the Second Wave or Fordist
economy will recognise and respond to the need for risk-taking, responsiveness, results-oriented
programmes and services, reciprocity and relationships and transform their organisational,
administrative and academic systems, or whether new providers will prove quicker, more flexible and
more effective in responding to the need for a working-learning culture and infrastructure. Hanna &
Associates (2000: 134), and Cunningham et al (2000: xviii), caution that great care will be needed to
obviate unproved or disreputable operators from exploiting this industry and individuals’ educational
aspirations. It will be equally important to ensure that, with so many in the world still denied
educational opportunity, open and distance education still upholds the principles of access and equity
and is not totally subjugated to the politics of economic liberalism.
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Dear
Professor Rumble:
It is indeed an honor to have the opportunity of having you in our class. I completely agree
with your views about the competitive vulnerability of DTUs, I have been involved in a
project, sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), studying
the use of distance education as an option for the training of Local Governments in Latin
America and the Caribbean. Distance education seems the only possible option to cover
the educational needs of 16000 municipalities and about 24 million public employees who
often come into office with limited or no experience or knowledge about local government
policies and/or management.
As a part of this study we collected information about existing distance education programs
aimed for public officials in the region and with a presence in the Internet. So far, we found
110 programs of variable quality and for different educational levels. Of these, only 3
programs are being offer by DTUs and all of them at the graduate level - 2 for an
international market and one for a national audience. All the others programs are offered
exclusively by DMUs or by DMUs in joint venture with other CBUs, bilateral agencies,
NGOs (non governmental agencies) and/or national institutes for public administration.
There are two cases in particular that show some of the comparative disadvantages of
DTUs vs DMUs, for this specific situation. The first one is the National Institute for the
Governance in Spain, that joined forces with the Open Universitat of Catalunya (UOC) in a
program that works basically in the same way as the MDE at UMUC: one Masters degree
that it is also offered either as three individual certificates or as nine individual classes. The
second one is the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), with a pool of
about 400 different courses, within the Governmental Development Program, available in
several modalities: in-campus, hybrid or blended, and completely on-line. Governmental or
private institutions can choose, mix and match, and thus, tailor the classes according with
the individual needs when requesting more than 30 courses with at least 30 participants.
Although the courses are in general only "improved" versions of their regular on-campus
classes, UNAM has at least five other advantages over the UOC that are almost a pre-
requisite for the Latin American population. They can: offer programs for different Spanish-
speaking international audiences, "adjust" contents to specific local contexts, up-date
contents on a regular basis as new policies and regulation enter into effect, offer face-to-
face support on an as needed basis, offer very competitive prices and train students at
several educational levels. Considering the size, academic, ethnical and cultural background
of the targeted audience, the wide thematic range to be covered and the scarce funding
available, governments are usually forced to choose quantity over quality.
It seems to me that it is almost impossible for a DTU to provide a comparable offering. I
would like to know if you have different views about these initiatives?
Thanks again for your input and comments,
Luz Adriana
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Hola
Luz, estoy de acuerdo - a mi me parece que las ventajas cayen en el campo de los
sistemas mas flexible.
[For others: yes - I agree with Luz - personally I think that the more flexible a system can
be, the more it can adapt its delivery to meet the needs of particular target populations and
sub-groups within the student population, the better. The issue then becomes, not to seek
economies of scale (what the DTUs were good at) but to find economies of scope.]
Greville
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Profesor Rumble:
Muchas gracias por su oportuna respuesta!
Luz Adriana
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Prof.
Rumble,
I found your comments on the DMUs to be very interesting. I developed an interest in this
area during our Distance Education Systems and Learning and Training with Multimedia
courses. That of course is if we consider DMUs to be synonymous with flexible or blended
learning (I will refer to this as flexible learning). And I would assume this to be the case if I
understand your discourse on the strengths of DMUs that you list in the article of
discussion. Do you find this a correct assumption?
I find that flexible learning may not only provide for both modes of learning - on campus
and distance - but may also give campus students the opportunity to take advantage of
technologies on campus, from the dorm or home. These students may now have the option
of attending a class session or accessing learning materials from a web site, video or audio
tapes. While I am not sure if any DMU uses these particular strategies, it seems one that
would make sense and would eventually find its way into the DMUs or CBUs. Bates
(2000) suggests this very topic (p. 17f). Peters (2001) second special meaning of flexible
learning, in that students should be allowed to choose when, where and how they want to
study (p. 156), also seems to support this idea.
I also agree with your treatment on cost comparisons of DTUs to DMUs. However, how
would my discussion of flexible learning impact this treatment? This idea of flexible learning
would seem to complicate costing exercises, especially in the area of different media, tuition
and the level of student support. Apportioning of costs may become more complicated as
well. Or would it? At this point, it may make complete sense to apportion the cost equally
amongst the entire student population.
Part of your reply to Luz Adriana states: "The issue then becomes, not to seek economies
of scale (what the DTUs were good at) but to find economies of scope." I couldn't agree
more. But do you think there is a possibility to reach a middle ground between economies
of scale and scope within flexible learning? This would be quite a topic of research or
feasibility study.
Thanks for your time again.
warm regards
Gary
Bates, A.W. (Tony). (2000). Managing technological change. San Francisco: Josey- Bass.
Peters, O. (2001). Learning and teaching in distance education: Analysis and interpretations
from an international perspective. London: Kogan Page.
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Gary
Do we consider DMUs to be synonymous with flexible or blended learning
YES.
I find that flexible learning may not only provide for both modes of learning - on campus
and distance - but may also give campus students the opportunity to take advantage of
technologies on campus, from the dorm or home.
I AGRE. I SUSPECT SOME OF THE AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES ARE AT THIS
POINT - E.G. DEAKIN UNIVERSITY. ALSO POTCHESTROOM IN RSA IS
GOING THIS WAY.
I also agree with your treatment on cost comparisons of DTUs to DMUs. However, how
would my discussion of flexible learning impact this treatment? This idea of flexible learning
would seem to complicate costing exercises, especially in the area of different media, tuition
and the level of student support. Apportioning of costs may become more complicated as
well. Or would it? At this point, it may make complete sense to apportion the cost equally
amongst the entire student population.
IN A SENSE IT MAKES THE BOUNDARIES MORE DIFFICULT TO
ASCERTAIN, AND HENCE FUNDING. AUSTRALIA SOLVES THIS BY MAKING
NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE FUNDING OF AN AND OFF CAMPUS
STUDENTS, BUT OF COURSE THAT WOULD MEAN THAT ONE NEVER TOOK
ADVANTAGE OF THE ECONOMIES OF SCALE IMPLICIT IN DE FIRST AND
SECOND GENERATION INSTITUTIONS. WOULD THAT MATTER - POSSIBLY
NOT.
HOWEVER ONE COULD STILL COST AT THE COURSE LEVEL, RULING OUT
HIGH COST DE SOLUTIONS FOR VERY SMALL COURSES AND USING E-
LEARNING ROUND TEXT BOOKS AS THE ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO
F2F, WHERE THE TRADE OFFS ECONOMICALLY ARE MORE OR LESS THE
SAME; BUT WITH BIG CAMPUS BASED COURSES ENCOURAGING PEOPLE
TO DO MORE RESOURCE BASED LEARNING, WHERE TRADE OFFS DO
EXIST.
IF THE ACCOUNTING SYSTEM WERE GOOD ENOUGH, IT COULD EASILY
ALLOCATE COSTS ACCURATELY AT COST AND EVEN INDIVIDUAL
STUDENT ON A COURSE LEVEL.
Part of your reply to Luz Adriana states: "The issue then becomes, not to seek economies
of scale (what the DTUs were good at) but to find economies of scope." I couldn't agree
more. But do you think there is a possibility to reach a middle ground between economies
of scale and scope within flexible learning? This would be quite a topic of research or
feasibility study.
INTUITIVELY YES, I THINK ONE CAN LOOK FOR BOTH - IN SOME CASES
EMPHASISING SCALE, IN OTHERS SCOPE - SEE ABOVE. THIS FOR ME IS
THE VIRTUE OF FLEXIBLE LEARNING AS VS A STRONG BOUNDARY
BETWEEN CAMPUS AND DE.
GREVILLE
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Prof
Rumble,
Thank you for your responses. This is plenty to think about and the discussion thread has
been very enjoyable and enlightening.
Have a great weekend!
warm regards
Gary |
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Professor
Rumble,
I have appreciated reading my classmates' thoughtful questinos and your timely responses,
both contributing greatly to my learning and understanding.
With a combination of business and education experience, I feel that education institutions
do a very poor job at "running the numbers" to determine future growth and stability in
terms of enrollment, profitability, and return on investment. I am interested in your
perspective on the following questions:
1. Was the demise of the Open University - United States predictable from an economic
standpoint? With the US distance education market growing exponentially, how is it so
different than other parts of the world where the OU has experienced much greater
success?
2. Do education institutions place the proper emphasis on finding economies of scale, a
competitive advantage, or a specific return on investment, compared to other non-
economic factors such as political/government pressure, acting as a follower and not as a
leader, and attractiveness of a particular market (i.e. offering courses/degree used for
promotion/high profile purposes)?
I thank you in advance for your reply.
Chris Thompson
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Hello
Chris
USOU
1. Was the demise of the Open University - United States predictable from an economic
standpoint? With the US distance education market growing exponentially, how is it so
different than other parts of the world where the OU has experienced much greater
success?
Its difficult for me to respond because I never saw the Business case, thoughthere would
have been one. But I believe that experience in the past (the failure of the OU to get into
real and sustainable partnerships with the colleges it worked with int the early 1970s, and
the failure of the sales office it set up in New York in the late 1970s early 1980s, should
have warned it that the US market was difficult to penetrate, partly because the structure of
the degrees does not equate with US credit structures easily, and also the OU has no name
among customers in the US (as oppsoed to academics interested in experimentation in
organisational and technological approaches to HE. My feeling as an outsider that the
failure derived from the hubris of one man. (The success elsewhere is limited, incidentally,
though better. Usually its been in a partnership.)
2. Do education institutions place the proper emphasis on finding economies of scale, a
competitive advantage, or a specific return on investment, compared to other non-
economic factors such as political/government pressure, acting as a follower and not as a
leader, and attractiveness of a particular market (i.e. offering courses/degree used for
promotion/high profile purposes)?
No - the OU is better because it is a business in many ways, but even it follows govt leads
down useless paths because it believes that there is political (followed by financial in grant)
capital to be made. But generally educational planning is fairly poor, in my opinion.
Greville
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Aloha
Professor Rumble!
My
comments come from Vernon J. White's response starting on page 89. If I am reading
it correctly, he is making the point that it is easier for a DTU to go to a DMU, than a CBU
to a DTU. His reasoning is more towards funding versus academic inferiority. Also, would
you agree that DTU's should aspire to go to a DMU format as part of a growth process of
the institution?
Mahalo
(thanks)! Jenny |
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hi
there Jenny:
he seems to me to be saying:
a) there is a big hurdle to overcome for CBUs because they will have to produce quality
materials - which is costly because time consuming, and will require them to redirect
resources
b) it will be difficult for CBUs to match the quality of DTUs, so quality becomes the DTUs
strength
c) it will be easier for DTUs to use their existing high quality teaching materials to teach on
campus students
So DTU to DMU is an easier route than CBU to DMU.
I think that is what you had got to, so I think youre right, aren't you
Greville
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Hello
Prof. Rumble,
First,
I would like to extend my sincere appreciation for finding the time in your busy
schedule to visit our class. It is both an honor and a pleasure to be able to learn from you.
While
I am not new to distance education courses, I am fairly new to the MDE program. I
have taken courses that have included CMC and audio and video tapes. I must say that I
prefer the asynchronous conferences most of all.
I
have a question regarding joint ventures and franchising options.
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First,
I understand that a sharing of courses among institutions would reduce
development costs, however, I am not sure that I understand how those costs
would be apportioned. Would it make sense for the institution that develops the
course to determine a cost per student and then use some kind of markup when
licensing the course to other institutions? I'm sure they would want to recoup some
of the cost of development in this way.
- Second, in the case
of franchising, would the owner of the course lease rights to
other institutions? Would they include the possible students from the other
institutions when figuring total student costs.
I
will freely admit that I am not a dollars and cents person, I am more the technology type. I
am very grateful to you and my many classmates who have insight into finances and can
shed light onto this subject.
Regards,
Michele |
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Hi
Michele, These are great questions. I am interested to hear Dr. Rumbles response. I
believe that in the situation where a course is developed and leased to another institution
that there would be some sort of royalty payment based on the number of students that
access it just as if someone authored a book. In most cases, that would probably make it
more cost-efficient for other institutions to use the materials. I think it will be interesting to
see how initiatives like Merlot (for reusable learning objects), open course CMS's, and
other initiatives will change the costs of developing courses. Jill
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Just a comment
on Reusable Learning Objects: what is the cost of indexing them, searching
for them, etc. Won't it be easier just to do what we do already: individual academics who
presumably know their field recycle their own work, and reference other people's work ...
where they know it. That includes in designing courses as well as delivering them. But the
search to find materials is often time-consuming too. I know there are lots of people who
are very enthusiatic about reusable learning objects, but have we proof that this will lower
costs ... ? I would love to see it, one way or the other, if it exists
Greville
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Michele
There is not as far as I know any set pattern. There are a few cases where 2 institutions run
a joint degree and both make inputs. Thomas could explain the UMUC-Oldenburg venture
better than I. Exactly what arrangements happened when South Australia and Deakin
shared a women's studies course I am not sure, for example.
You are right that most people want a pay out. That limits transfers. Its interesting that when
Dublin City University wanted to use UKOU courses, they found that the cost was so high
that it was better to create their own courses if there were more than 123 students on the
course. The African Virtual University was going to take the best western courses to
Africa, but the original partnership organisations in the US and elsewhere found that it was
neither financially nor philathropically wirth their while, and they withdrew. RMIT Uni in
Australlia does have a partnership, and I assume the bill is picked up by AusAID. That
gives AVU the license to use the programme for I think five years. At the end of that time
they will own the course - but since its on computing, by then it will obsolete and worthless
anyway.
Greville
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As
I read the thread on July 7th (and I know there have posts since then which may
address this issue) and Papers and Debates on the Economics and Costs of Distance and
Online learning, I perceive an underlying assumption of a scarity mentality versus an
abundance mentality.
First for those unfamiliar with the concept, a scarcity mentality would say that the realm of
distance learning is like a pie, DTUs, DMUs and CBUs are in competition for a slice of the
learning pie and if one gets more then another gets less - there is only one pie. The
abundance mentality would say that DTUs, DMUs and CBUs may be in competition but
not necessariyl for a learning pie that is fixed in size. Rather, as they compete effectively, the
pie will grow, there will be an abundance of opportunities.
The reason I bring this up is that the debate about whether if DTUs should move to become
DMUs and whether CBUs can effectively compete is a good one to understand the
fundamental strengths of each method and their strengths in the marketplace.
I would hypothesize that for the foreseeable future all types can be successfull if the
continue to evolve, continue to improve the quality of their offerings, continue to change and
not stagnate. Lifelong learning has become much more of a necessity. The need for
education past high school and college has become more important. The need for education
in developing countries is critical. All of these offer opportunites. I look at Phoenix
University which has expanded from a small operation to a large operaiton in a short period
of time as evidence that there is demand for the right learning for the audiences.
So the challenge is to recognize your strenths and weaknesses an institution, anaylyze the
strenghts and weakness of your markets, look at opporuntiies and pitfalls and develop
strategies that are built on these strenghts and pursue the opportunies while avoiding the
pitfalls.
Greenville et al, I look forward to your reaction.
Dan
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Dan:
I agree in general that there is no scarcity market. If the world's population is going to
grow to 8.9 billion (there has been a recent adjustment down because of the impact of
AIDS), then gibven we have 6 billion now, and could have nearly 3 billion moreby 2050,
there is clearly an enormous task to do to educate all these people. Also as you say, lifelong
learning is a key factor now. Against that, population growth is not true of all societies: Italy
for example, is no longer reproducing itself, nor the UK (except to the extent that
immigration changes the balance). The US continues to grow, but nothing like some
countries.
You could say, well, go international, if there are not the people in your jurisdiction, start
teaching where there are people, hence of course the push for GATS (General Agrement
on Trade in Services) which would open up the education market - but generally teaching
internationally is a commercial venture done for profit.
Is there are market out there? Many of the new people in the world - the nearly 3 billion
growth, and many existing people, are born into a life that the philospher Ted Honderich in
"After the Terror" (Edinburgh University Press, 2002) calls half lives and quarter lives ...
where life expectancy is low, and where the quality of life is poor. These people are out of
the market equation if the market is driven by private as opposed to state funded
interventions. And we are seeing how dofficult it is to achieve the Education for All targets
already!
Finally, in a country like the UK, we are talking about saturation as institutions struggle to
reach the government's 50% in higher education target.
So in principle, yes I agree with you but in practice I think its more complex
Greville
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Prof.
Rumble,
1)When considering projected income from student fees, we seem to have been
considering it from the viewpoint of a single per-credit tuition rate. Is the concept of "in-
state" tuition and "out-of-state" tuition unique to the United States or is a two-tier
tuition
rate a more global concept? How should it be factored in when considering cost analysis
for U.S. distance education programs? It would seem that while the cost per student would
be the same for all students, the income per student might vary.
2)It seems that while your 1992 article The Competitive Vulnerability of Distance Teaching
Universities refers to CBUs, DMUs and DTUs, by the writing of your 1998 Competitive
Vulnerability: An Addendum to the Debate you are also using the term 'mixed- mode.' You
write "Over the years I have come to the conclusion that those looking at the costs of
distance education relative to other approaches have generally failed to address the costs of
"hybrid" systems - that is, "mixed- mode" or "dual-mode" systems that
teach both by
distance and traditional means." (p.107) Are you considering "hybrid," mixed-mode"
and
"dual-mode" as interchangeable or do you see distinctions between them?
Thank you,
Diane
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Diane
1)Is the concept of "in-state" tuition and "out-of-state" tuition unique to the
United States or
is a two-tier tuition rate a more global concept?
NOY JUST A US CONCEPT: LOTS OF SYSTEM CHARGE DIFFERENT RATES
FOR CITIZENS OF THE JURISDICTION VS FOREIGN CITIZENS, UK
UNIVERSITIES INCLUDED, THOUGH IN THE EURPOEAN UNION
COUNTRIES, THE FEES CHARGED HAVE TO BE THE SAME FOR ALL
CITIZENS OF THE EU.
How should it be factored in when considering cost analysis for U.S. distance education
programs? It would seem that while the cost per student would be the same for all students,
the income per student might vary.
YES; YOU JUST BUILD THE FACTORS INTO YOUR PLANNING MODEL.
2)It seems that while your 1992 article The Competitive Vulnerability of Distance Teaching
Universities refers to CBUs, DMUs and DTUs, by the writing of your 1998 Competitive
Vulnerability: An Addendum to the Debate you are also using the term 'mixed-mode.' You
write "Over the years I have come to the conclusion that those looking at the costs of
distance education relative to other approaches have generally failed to address the costs of
"hybrid" systems - that is, "mixed-mode" or "dual-mode" systems that teach
both by
distance and traditional means." (p.107) Are you considering "hybrid," mixed- mode"
and
"dual-mode" as interchangeable or do you see distinctions between them?
I THINK ONCE I TRIED TO MAKE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN MIXED AND
DUAL MODE BUT I CAN'T NOW RECALL WHY - TREAT THE TERMS AS
INTERCHANGEABLE.
Greville
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Greville and all,
The conference with Greville draws to an end and I want to thank our visiting expert
for his
engagement during this conference. My message of thanks became a bit like a ritual (for
Greville not so for the class). But I found the citation from a participant of the first course quite
to the point:
"Here, Here; My head is still spinning. Drinking from the fire hose is the only
way to describe
the experience. If Greville remains a part of our UMUC experience I can see that many of us
will be tapping his keg of knowledge often. Well done and thank you."
The comment turned out to be generic and may describe your experience as well. I believe
Greville lives up to the highest expectations we had in the role of the visiting expert. Friendly,
responsive, interesting, and as the name says, expert.
Since I made the experience that all conference are a bit different and it may be
a pity
especially for Greville to leave the virtual classroom without proper documentation. Though he
might have saved his postings but probably out of context. As a special service and thanks I
have attached a MindManager version of this conferences which better shows how the differet
questions and responses hang together. (1)
This first time, I could not be sure that Greville would take up the role of the visiting
a next time.
I then remembered a Ndebele saying which reflected my hopes. It says: "Siabonga lingadinwa
na kusasa." "Thank you; do it again tomorrow" (meaning in my case next term). To may
amazement I begin to discover that the expression may in reality be a spell..:->
Thanks Greville, but also thanks to the others who asked the questions
Thomas
(Ndebele are a southern African nation.)
(1) The reason why I chose MindManager to document this conference is the lack of
complete
threading in WebTycho. (I requested several times that WebTycho should arrange for complete
threading - which is technically easily done - but my request was turned down for reasons I
could not unnderstand.) In the attached file you can choose between several display modes
(Map and 'Gliederung' = table of content). Unfortunately our own way of posting messages
contributes to confusion: often we have repetitive headers; not indication to whom the message
is addressed, no signature who wrote the message. Especially if you want to write a summary
this lack of structure makes the task time consuming and cumbersome. Swich to Map' for
getting an overview and switch to Gliederung to have the colpletely threaded version of the
conference.
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Thomas
I have added responses to the questions that were hanging in the air from Cynthia for
example!
As usual it has been an enormous pleasure to take part in this virtual conversation. It was
Friere who said that as one progresses in education, so the-teacher-of-the students
increasingly becomes the- student-of-the-teachers, and so it is in this conference as in
others: Even the questions can spark one's creativity in thinking about new things, and
expressing old things in new ways.
To the students then - all the best in your studies: Que les vayan bien.
Thomas, can you begin to think about how we carve up the new book for writing? I'll be
back in the UK 9 August.
Greville
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Thank
you, Prof. Rumble for being with us. The week was all too short and just flew by. It
has been a wonderful experience picking such a great brain. Please don't stop publishing
your articles!
(And thanks for the candid comments about working with Sir John. They confirm what I
have suspected for a long time.)
Also, thank you Thomas, for bringing us Prof. Rumble.
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Prof.
Rumble,
I want to thank you as well for being a part of our class this week. I truly enjoyed the
experience.
Again, thank you for your time.
Warm regards,
Gary
?All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.?
JRR Tolkien
?How much better to
get wisdom than gold!
And to get understanding is to
be chosen rather than silver.?
Proverbs 16:16
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Although
Thomas has said this all much more eloquently than I, thank you for your time and
your thoughtful replies.
I appreciate your ability to answer both the simplest questions (like mine on successful
consortiums) and complex questions with equal graciousness and quality of information.
We have all been enriched by this "visit". Have a safe and productive trip to Rwanda and I
am looking forward to your new collaboration with Thomas.
Til then have a lovely cuppa'
Tea--
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Its been a pleasure
Cynthia
Greville
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1. Introducing Greville Rumble
