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 | "Western Governors University has neither faculty nor campus. But if all goes
according to plan, it will soon have students. Sometime late this spring, between 50 and
100 people are expected to ramble through the institution's virtual halls, either
enrolling in its unusual degree program or signing up for individual distance learning
courses prepared by more traditional educational ventures.
The project, with administrative offices in Salt Lake City and academic offices in Denver,
is one of the boldest of a number of recent experiments using high tech for higher
education — a trend prompted at least in part by the emergence of the Internet.
The people behind Western Governors University are hoping it will save state governments
future education costs, while bringing college-level coursework, workforce training and
degrees to a far wider range of people. "One of the major things is to reach an
audience that is generally unable to go to campuses to receive the learning they
seek," said Robert C. Albrecht, chief academic officer for Western Governors
University. "It is truly a distance learning project, to serve those not served
otherwise."
But the project is also raising questions about whether electronic
"distance-learning" is a sufficient replacement for the campus variety.
"There is no substitute for the student actually witnessing a mind at work in a
classroom," said Kenneth H. Ashworth, who retired last year after 21 years as
commissioner of higher education in Texas. "I have a hard time seeing how that will
occur over e-mail" -- Pamela Mendeles, "Online University Set to Open
its (Virtual) Doors", NYTimes, 3/4/98 |
| "California's leading colleges and universities are working together to create the
world's virtual university -- with courses, degree programs and other services. The
California Virtual University ties together the online and distance education offerings of
accredited colleges and universites in California." |
| "The new Southern Regional Electronic Campus (SREC) enables students across the
South to take courses at scores of colleges and universities without leaving their
hometowns, and students will be able to shop for courses in this electronic marketplace
knowing that each college and university has pledged to follow the Principles of Good
Practice.
The Electronic Campus – characterized as interstate educational cooperation at its
best – will be available for students to take courses beginning in January. Nearly 50
colleges and universities in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states will
offer more than 100 courses for students to take, and the number of colleges and courses
may increase dramatically in the fall of 1998.
Students will enter the electronic marketplace of courses at the SREB website. There
students can get information about courses, and they will know the Principles of Good
Practice the colleges and universities have pledged to meet. Students will be able to link
electronically with the college or university offering the course."
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| "The Open University is Britain's largest and most innovative educational and
training organisation. It leads the world in the large-scale application of technology to
learning. There are some 160,000 people currently studying with the Open University.
Of these 120,000 are working towards a BA or BSc degree while another 10,000 are
registered for postgraduate degrees. Others are taking professional development programmes
in management, education, health and social welfare, manufacturing and computer
applications. In addition the University offers self-contained study packs, many of which
are used by more than one person.Most students are aged between 25 and 45, and the median
age is in the mid-thirties. Our oldest graduate so far was 93, while our youngest student
was a nine-year-old prodigy taking maths. There are roughly equal numbers of men and
women. About three-quarters of students remain in full-time employment throughout their
studies.
OU courses are available to all residents of the European Union, and in some other
countries where we work with local partners - for example, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ethiopia, Singapore and Hong Kong." |
| "IBM Global Campus combines advanced technologies, network computing solutions,
applications, consulting and services tailored to enable colleges and universities to
expand their offerings to new groups of students." |
| The Sloan Center for AsynchronousLearning Environments (SCALE) was established in March
1995 with a grant from the Alfred P.Sloan Foundation. SCALE faculty are participating in a
three-year project of restructuring undergraduate courses to integrate various techniques
associated with asynchronous learning networks (ALN). The goals of this project are to
create efficiencies in the educational process (cost, time, faculty productivity), to
increase student retention, and to decrease time-to-degree.
"Work supported by the Sloan Foundation on asynchronous learning networks is
exploring the potential of ALNs to provide learning to anyone who wishes to learn, at a
time and place of the learner's choice." -- Oblinger and Rush,
"The Learning Revolution - The Challenge of Information Technology in the
Academy", IBM
Higher Education Website |
| "The California State University has completed the first phase of a planning effort
designed to develop its information technology capabilities. This strategy will help the
22-campus system carry out its educational mission in the coming years of high enrollments
and budgetary constraints.
The result, the Integrated Technology Strategy (ITS), takes advantage of the explosion in
electronic and digital innovations that is changing the way California and the world do
business. It also builds on a decade of progressive successes within the CSU, where
individual campuses have developed new approaches to learning, teaching, and institutional
management by the imaginative application of information technology." --
http://its.calstate.edu/overview.htm
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