Virtual University
Is online learning changing higher education?
Excerpt reprinted from
Regional
Review Q1 2002
published by the Federal Reserve Bank
of Boston.
Download the the full text
of the article. [PDF file 215K]
THE CLASSROOM GETS CONNECTED
In her graduate-level “Leadership and Management” course last May,
Professor Deborah Nutter of Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy posed the question, “Who do you think is the most
successful and effective foreign policy leader
of the twentieth century?” One student defined successful and effective
as “a person who has been able to spread his thoughts, ideas, and
activities internationally and has thus influenced the whole world
significantly.” He then noted that Lenin could be seen as such a leader
since he was a powerful purveyor of Communist ideas both before and
after his death. Another disagreed, arguing that Lenin’s influence was
no more than a myth perpetuated by the Communist Party. The two parried
for a while, and then the discussion turned to other candidates.
None of this classroom debate is so remarkable, except that it all
occurred online. Stepping into an Internet classroom is at once familiar
and alien to anyone who has experienced a traditional college education.
All the usual elements of a class are there—the professor, the students,
the syllabus, the lectures and discussions. But each has metamorphosed
into something recognizable as, but thoroughly changed from, its
in-person counterpart. For instance, rather than face-to-face
introductions, online students often meet the professor and their fellow
students by reading online biographies, or perhaps by downloading
prerecorded audio or video clips. The syllabus is accessible with a
click of the mouse, and it may change frequently as students and
 faculty work
together to chart the direction of the course. Lectures, broadly
defined, still play an integral part in conveying course material for
many classes, but they often take advantage of the Internet’s
interactivity by including links to relevant sources or
providing alternate explanations to mesh with different learning styles.
Course discussions like the one in Nutter’s class do not require all
students to participate at the same time. Instead, they happen via
“asynchronous chats” in which students log in at their leisure, read the
prior discussion on the topic at hand, and participate by responding in
kind. Students even do group projects, communicating with group members
via email or instant messaging facilities. All these features are made
possible by courseware such as WebCT and Blackboard, a new generation of
software that integrates all these classroom-related functions into one
seamless and easy-to-navigate package.
Why would universities adopt this teaching model, so far outside their
usual purview? Student demand is a primary reason. As the nation becomes
increasingly wired, students expect to communicate online with their
professors and their university as easily as they do the other
businesses they patronize. It makes sense for universities to invest in
courseware to facilitate this interaction—and once courseware is
available for on-campus courses, it’s not much more effort to move a
course completely online. As universities have added technical capacity,
they’ve also discovered other advantages of teaching over the Internet.
For one, the lack of physical boundaries in Internet-based learning can
help public institutions and community colleges achieve their goal of
serving the whole community. John Christensen, a coordinator of academic
services at the Community College of Vermont (CCV), says, “Online
learning is the ultimate fulfillment of what’s been our mission since we
started 30 years ago. We’re bringing college into people’s homes.”
Furthermore, online learning can be cost-effective; most online courses
are no more costly than their in-person equivalents. “The software for
teaching online is not inexpensive, but online courses don’t have the
facilities cost,” says CCV’s president, Tim Donovan. The price is
worthwhile since distance learning helps expand the student base,
increasing revenue potential.
Meeting its Mission
Starting an online master’s degree program helped the Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, find a
new way to fulfill its mission of educating professionals for
international leadership positions. The Fletcher School is now in its
second year of offering its highly regarded Global Master of Arts
Program (GMAP) to high-level international affairs specialists around
the world. “We started GMAP because we couldn’t reach some of the
students we really wanted,” says Deborah Nutter, senior associate dean
and director of the program. “For example, we have a student who is an
undersecretary in the office of the president of Uganda. How can we get
him to come to a campus-based program? We can’t.” Unlike the online
offerings at many schools, GMAP incorporates an intensive residential
component into its one-year curriculum- two weeks at the beginning of
the program, plus two more tow-week stints later in the year. Meeting
each other in person, according to Nutter, ensures that the students
feel a part not just of GMAP, but also of the broader Fletcher
community. (It doesn’t hurt that they have the same access to student
services, from library resources to job placement, as regular Fletcher
students.) The courseware itself is surprisingly low-tech. “We have
students dialing with very slow connections. It’s nice to have different
kinds of streaming media, but it’s not practical for our students. We
keep the technology simple, but effective,” says Eric Burkhart, manager
of technology for the program.
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