Gary E. Miller
Gary Miller, former Executive Director of the International University Consortium at the University of Maryland University College, describes the varied and complex development of distance education in the United States.
He indicates how widely established as a method of study distance education is in business and industry, the military, and many sectors of education, and notes how it has become embedded as part of a wider range of delivery methods within institutions rather than having institutions dedicated to it alone. The variety of provision is a natural reflection also of the fact that education cannot be a Federal responsibility. The impact of satellite and other technologies in forcing the pace of change is also described.
In many parts of the world, distance education has developed as a national movement, often centered around a single institution. In the United States, however, the pattern of distance education is much different, reflecting the history of US higher education in general. The patchwork quilt quality of distance education in the United States has made it difficult for many people to understand the long tradition of distance education in the US and the role it plays in helping US institutions respond to changing needs. This article will attempt to put into perspective the US experience with distance education and the directions in which the field is moving.
Before proceeding, it may be useful to define terms. Many readers of Open Learning may define distance education within the context of the Open University movement, in which case distance education may be synonymous with the institutional structure that supports an Open University. That is not generally the case in the United States, where distance education is defined as a function or process: the provision of education in which the student and instructor are separated by time or space. Seen in this light, distance education can happen in a wide variety of institutional settings and curricula, and that is exactly the case in the United States.
Distance education in the United States is not limited to higher education. For example, the National Home Study Council represents a variety of commercial correspondence and distance education services. The military makes extensive use of distance education methods, and corporations as varied as IBM and Aetna Insurance use teleconferencing, computer-based instruction, and other distance education methods in their corporate training programmes, some of which are much more sophisticated than those found in most colleges and universities. That said, this article will focus on distance education as it is found in the educational community, primarily In higher education.
Nor do the states have total control of education in their boundaries. While most states own and operate institutions of higher education, there are also many private institutions, ranging from such great institutions as Harvard and Yale to 'degree mills' that may be licensed by the state in which they are located but over which that state has scant control. In the case of distance education, states have even less control; generally, law permits an institution in one state to operate a distance education programme in other states without interference as long as the institution does not establish a physical presence in the state. Several states have established what are best described as open learning institutions, self-standing colleges and universities that are designed to meet the growing demand for continuing education among the adult population. Among the most highly regarded are the University of Maryland University College, Empire State College in New York State, Thomas A. Edison State College in New Jersey, and Governors State University in Illinois. While these institutions use distance education methods, they are not necessarily the only institutions in their states that are involved m distance education. In fact, it is the diversity of institutions operating in any state that has given US distance education its unique character. In addition to open learning institutions, one can expect to find distance education programmes in the following institutions in almost every one of the United States:
In this many-layered, overlapping community of institutions, distance education has emerged not primarily as a separate institutional mission, but as one of many ways these diverse institutions serve their communities. Just as the concept of continuing education has found its way into almost every traditional college and university in the United States, so has distance education.
The diversity of institutions, missions, and students that have evolved in US higher education has affected the way in which distance education and open learning have developed as concepts and in practice in the US. Distance education has come to be seen as a more or less technical issue within institutions, rather than as the defining factor of an institution. It has become, in effect, embedded within existing institutions. Such diverse activities as correspondence study, telecourses, live interactive television, satellite teleconferencing, telephone conferencing, and computer-based instruction are all seen and accepted as distance education. It is not unusual in a large institution for several of these activities to be underway simultaneously in different administrative areas of the Institution. However, most of the distance education effort is housed in the Continuing Education department, that corner of US higher education that houses most, if not all 'non-traditional' instruction: this includes evening credit courses, adult degree programmes, conferences, non- credit professional education, and a variety of public service activities.
Other distance education technologies, however, are rapidly increasing the role of distance education in group instruction. Satellite delivery originally simply a way of delivering programmes to local institutions for rebroadcast over local television stations, is now being used extensively for credit and non-credit 'teleconferences', in which live, satellite-delivered programmes are beamed into conference room and classroom at local colleges and off-campus centres. Similarly, the use of computer-enhanced audio-graphic teleconferencing (a multi- media delivery system that combines computer software and still-frame television with audio conferencing over telephone lines) has allowed institutions to deliver traditional on-campus degree programmes to distant sites at low cost. Nor is it unusual to find video-tapes of classroom lectures being used by students who are studying independently of the classroom at home or in the workplace: in this case, the video-taped lecture becomes simply another 'text' for an individualised programme, with the distance education student having no direct relationship with the students on the tape. Other inter-active technologies, notably computer-based instruction interactive video-disc, essentially are independent of the issue of group versus independent learning. The University of Maryland University College, for example, has developed a computer-based curriculum in nuclear science for use by staff at nuclear power utilities. Utilities enroll students as groups, but for the most part the students work independently, working with the computer-based instruction to master the material rather than achieve less than mastery in an attempt to learn at the group's pace.
An emerging issue in the United States is the degree to which the broad application of distance education methods to both individualised and group- paced instructional settings will, or should, affect the underlying assumptions on which curricula and individual course objectives are based.
Less evidently from the statistics, there is also a great deal of work at the national level. However, readers whose reference point is a national open uni- versity may have difficulty understanding the national scene in the United States. There are, indeed, institutions that operate nationally, but none has the man- date of a national open university. Instead, national activity tends to focus on networks and consortia designed to bring national to local institutions and programmes.
In some cases, the names of these networks further confuses the picture, since several of these networks call themselves universities. One of the earliest consortia for distance education, for example, was the University of Mid-America UMA), which operated in the 1970s UMA was a course development consortium of institutions in the mid-western states. A more recent example is the Mind Extension University, a commercial venture of a national cable television operator. Like UMA, Mind Extension University is not a university. Instead, it is a cable television system that works through a group of 10 universities. MEU registers the students on behalf of the participating universities, distributes books, arranges for audio teleconferences among students and faculty, but each participating institution provides the instruction and offers course credit. Closer to the traditional role of a university is the National Technological University (NTU), which maintains a series of articulation agreements that allow students to earn a degree by participating in satellite-delivered courses from a number of institutions.
For the most part, however, the role of national distance education organisations in the US is to support the work of local institutions. In many cases, these national organisations focus on the role of media and technology in distance education. One reason is that, while institutions seem to be able to fund and support print-based distance education and low-cost 'candid classroom' televised instruction at the local level, it is difficult to justify the risk of producing more expensive kinds of distance education materials at the single-institution level. The University of Mid-America, cited above, is an example of an early course development consortium. Another reason is that institutions are not unwilling to purchase or license media-based materials produced at another institution; this distribution market has led to the creation of state, regional, and national services designed to lower the direct cost of acquisition to the local institution.
An early example of how technology brings institutions together is the Appalachian Educational Satellite Programme (AESP), a satellite-based distance education programme administered originally by the University of Kentucky. AESP used an experimental US satellite to deliver credit and non-credit continuing education services to people living in rural Appalachia in the eastern United States. Funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission, the programme served to bring professional and vocational education to adults in isolated communities; it included graduate credit courses in teacher education and nursing, along with non-credit workshops for firefighters and other vocations. While the University of Kentucky offered credit for courses offered over the system, AESP also invited participation by other colleges and universities. Today, AESP has evolved into The Learning Channel, a national cable television channel that includes a wide range of formal and informal educational programming, some of which is supported by local institutions of higher education. In 1980, the University of Maryland University College and the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting launched the first national consortium for course development and delivery, he National University Consortium for Telecommunications in Learning (now called the International University Consortium, IUC). It was, in part, developed in response to the lack of coherence in television-based distance education materials then available at the national level. At that time, the national library of media-assisted courses consisted of Individual telecourses produced by local community colleges, plus occasional courses (such as The Ascent of Man) that were developed around popular public television series. IUC, as it is now known, began with the goal of ensuring that local colleges and universities would have access to a curriculum-based sequence of courses for emerging distance education programmes. It started by adapting to North American curriculum patterns materials that had been developed at the British Open University. It has also produced a number of courses specifically suited to the needs of its member institutions. IUC expanded beyond the United States in 1983 with the addition to its membership of two Canadian institutions. In 1987, it diversified its course development policies and now offers more than 30 video-assisted, audio-assisted, computer-assisted, and print-based courses to 27 participating institutions. It has also responded to member needs by acquiring as well as producing courses and by developing a variety of faculty support services.
Shortly after the founding of the National University Consortium, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (the US publicly supported television service) entered the national distance education ranks with the Adult Learning Service. This service was designed to lower the financial risk of course acquisition to institutions that wanted to use television courses with local adult populations. PBS arranged distribution contracts with major course producers (primarily com- munity colleges). It then marketed these courses to local institutions through co- ordinators at local public television stations (which then broadcast the courses). Because of the number of institutions involved nationally, a college could license a course from PBS at a fraction of the cost of licensing directly from the producer.
PBS has benefited in recent years from course materials developed by the Annenberg/CPB Project. This 15-year project, funded by a $150 million grant by Ambassador Walter Annenberg (founder of TV Guide), has resulted in the creation of new video and audio courses of very high production value. The Annenberg/CPB Project has increased dramatically the expectations on the part of colleges and students alike for video-based distance education materials. It has also become a change agent for media-based distance education, funding experiments with computer-enhanced audio-graphic conferencing, for example, and devising new ways of delivering non-broadcast video at low cost to institutions. While IUC and PBS provide similar services, there are significant differences. The PBS course line up is generally lower-division material keyed to the two-year curricula of community colleges and the general freshman/ sophomore undergraduate requirements of four-year institutions. IUC, on the other hand, emphasizes the entire baccalaureate curriculum; more than half of the materials that it makes available to its member institutions are either upper division (junior/ senior) courses or highly interdisciplinary courses designed for baccalaureate degree programmes.
PBS does not develop courses, but instead serves to increase the distribution of materials developed by other agencies. IUC is primarily a course development consortium, and uses the academic resources of its member institutions to create materials that are then shared by other members. Nevertheless, the two are often complementary; it is not unusual for an IUC member college also to license some courses from PBS, for instance. In both cases, the final word rests with the local institution, which can be expected to adapt the materials, assign its own course number and credit level, and teach the course as a local course. As the number and quality of materials available have increased, the idea of institutions sharing distance education materials has become more accepted, with local adaptation the rule rather than the exception. The pattern of national organisations serving the needs of local institutions also exists in the non-credit arena. One example is the National University Teleconference Network (NUTN). Founded at Oklahoma State University, NUTN provides more than 200 member colleges and universities with one-day continuing education teleconferences delivered by satellite. As with telecourses, the teleconference is produced either by an NUTN member or an outside agency and then offered locally under the sponsor- ship of the local NUTN member college or university.
In 1980, for instance, broadcast television was the primary means of delivering video-based distance education courses. Today, local institutions increasingly have access to dedicated cable television channels at a time when many local public stations have begun to charge for access to the airwaves. In response, the Public Broadcasting Service has launched a variant on its Adult Learning Service that uses satellite to distribute non-broadcast materials as well as 'soft feeds' of programmes for rebroadcast on a local cable system, while IUC has begun to reach out beyond North America to attract member institutions in Australia and Europe.
Perhaps more important in the long run, the rapid influx of half-inch video- cassette machines into the home have created a non-broadcast alternative. At least one new company, College Video Corporation, has developed around the idea of renting video lessons to students for home viewing. College Video Corporation contracts for non-broadcast distribution rights with course producers and then licenses them to institutions on a per-student basis.
One of the prime motivators of national co-operation in the early 1980s was the need to share satellite delivery costs. Today, those costs are dropping, and smaller, more specialised satellite networks are appearing. Examples include the Black College Satellite Television Network. which uses satellite to deliver master teacher lectures to historically black colleges throughout the United States. Similarly, the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges recently announced its own satellite network, designed to help two-year institutions share resources.
A more subtle change may also be taking place. As noted earlier, most distance education in the United States takes place in print-based independent learning programmes on the correspondence study model or open learning external degree programmes that emphasise individualised study and optional classroom participation. For the most part, it has been the need to minimise local cost and to share risk in using telecommunications that has brought local programmes into national consortia or made them consumers of national programme services. What is changing is the emphasis on technology. Increasingly, institutions that were attracted to national consortia because of technology are staying with consortia in order to use a variety of course materials, including print-based materials. Programmes that began as 'telecourse' programmes are gradually evolving into more broadly based open learning programmes, concerned more with the overall needs of adult students and less with technology. This maturation could lead to many changes in distance education at the national level as consortia, networks, and private companies respond to the changing needs of institutions.
If anything, the future of distance education in the United States is one of increasing variety and heterogeneity, but also of increasing importance in a rapidly changing educational environment.
References
1 National University Continuing Education Association
(1988) Independent Study Program Profiles, 1986-87.
2 Brey, R. (1988) Telecourse Utilization Study, First Annual
Report: 1986-87 Academic Year (Austin Community College).
3 The US term baccalaureate degree refers to the
Bachelors or undergraduate qualification, conventionally
taken over four years. The "freshman" is as the name
suggests a student in his or her first year, and sophomore
is in the second year. The junior/senior division refers to
the ensuing third and fourth years.