Access to Education:
Virtual Colleges on the WebDaniel Kies
Department of English
College of DuPageDavies's first question concerns accessibility to education. Though each of us likely has a different interpretation of what "access to learning" means, most will agree that it somehow entails making education more available to more people. That means providing educational opportunities in the workplace, community, or the home, for those unable to attend college because of cultural, economic, or social barriers. Dedicated distant learning institutions and traditional colleges (institutions that I will call "virtual universities" in this report) have provided opportunities to students unable to attend campus for some time already. Until recently, traditional colleges relied mainly on correspondence, traditional print instructional materials, and, perhaps, audio and video cassettes, or television. That is starting to change now as educators devise new ways to capitalize on computer-based learning networks. An inviting, graphical screen layout, interactive multimedia learning materials, simplified access and searching of databases, exponential growth of new resources around the world, and open technical standards that allow any brand of computer to access the web are some of the advantages institutions see in using networked computing to make learning more accessible. There are several notable examples of how the web is being used today to provide increased access to education.3
Access to Higher Education — The Virtual University
Open University (http://keats.open.ac.uk/zx) in Great Britain is a prime example of a dedicated distance education institution that uses the web to support its mission of providing accessible education. The institution normally requires students to spend some time on campus in residency; however, it finds that there are always some students who cannot fulfill this requirement. In the summer of 1994, Open University experimented with offering an advanced psychology course over computer networks, aimed at this kind of student. Students reportedly relished the opportunity to be able to continue their studies without interfering with family commitments; instructors found the experience exhausting yet exhilarating; and the project evaluator wrote that the level of contact and interaction among students and instructors very similar to regular summer classes. The following year, Open University offered two computer science courses to students throughout the world via the web. Open University has continued to expand its list of offerings.
City University (http://www.cityu.edu), in Bellevue, Washington, another dedicated distance learning institution, operates with the mission of "making education available to all who desire it ... without interrupting commitments to work and home." Recently, they established EDROADS (Education Resource and Online Academic Degree System) to take advantage of Internet based technology to offer its programs. At present, City University provides online an MBA degree program and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems. Through the university's website, students around the world apply to the university, register for courses, and complete course work electronically. They can also send questions and assignments to the instructors from the website and participate in specialized live forums at the program and course level.
Two examples of traditional institutions using the web as the backbone of their distance learning efforts are Birkbeck College of the University of London, England, and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. In 1995, Birkbeck's highly-regarded Crystallography Department (http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/index.html) began to offer a 15 week course called "The Principles of Protein Structure" entirely over the internet. At the heart of the course were web-based interactive, graphical learning modules created by 30 experts in protein structure from around the world. The web activities were supported by online discussions with other students and course consultants. Some 250 students from countries around the world participated, including Brazil, China, Slovenia, and Croatia as well as Western countries. Students and course consultants were split into study groups of 15 to 20. One of the groups' activities was to prepare and publish at the course's website, a research report on an assigned protein. Evaluations of the course were extremely positive. One participant, a doctoral student, posted his views of the course at the university's website. Among the chief benefits he said were that he could study at his own convenience, access course resources simply by the click of a mouse, and maintain contact with a large number of scientists easily and informally.
CyberEd at the University of Massachusetts' Dartmouth Division of Continuing Education (http://www.umassd.edu/cybered/distlearninghome.html) offers a selection of standard, full-credit undergraduate and graduate courses globally. CyberEd courses make extensive use of the web, complete with images, sound, and video, to present, test, communicate materials among students. Its goal is
"to create a distance learning environment that rivals the traditional classroom environment in the quality and content of the learning experience ... to encourage a new educational paradigm in which the instructor is no longer regarded as the sole source of all knowledge."
Reports by participants and visitors posted at its website suggest that CyberEd is well on this way to achieving its goal.
Some of the pioneers in this field of the virtual university are the School for Transformative Learning of the California Institute for Integral Studies (http://www.capecod.net/caso/accred-ciis.html), which offers an accredited PhD, and Athena University (http://www.athena.edu/athena.html), which offers other kinds of unaccredited programs.
Still other examples of virtual colleges are coming online all the time. Here is a short list of several different institutions:
- Central Michigan University's Distance Learning Website (http://www.cel.cmich.edu/dlonline.htm)
- University of Colorado-Denver's College of Liberal Arts Online
(http://www.cuonline.edu/)- Indiana University's School of Education Online Courses (http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/disted/menu.html)
- Arizona State University's Distance Learning Website (http://www-distlearn.pp.asu.edu/index.html)
- National University's Extended Studies Institute, the Global MBA (http://www.nu.edu/esi/gmba/)
- iCOLLEGE, the Internet College Consortium website of online classes (http://www.learnwell.org/~edu/icollege.shtml)
- Ivy College's LearnWell Online
(http://spider.innercite.com/~edu/)- The Learning Network at Spectrum Virtual University
(http://www.vu.org/)- The Graduate School of America
(http://www.tgsa.com/)- The Internet College in Australia
(http://www.avon.net.au/~college/)- Kalamazoo College's use of an electronic portfolio
(http://www.kzoo.edu/~pfolio/)- The Ivy College Homepage
(http://www.learnwell.org/~edu/ivy.shtml)- UOL Publishing, accredited, online education by a courseware publisher (http://www.uol.com/website/)
- Christopher Newport University's Distance Education Program
(http://cnuonline.cnu.edu/)4Distance Learning Clearinghouses and Degree Programs.
There are also several lists of the many institutions offering online distance education. Quite literally, you can find hundreds of colleges and thousands of courses offered through distance education, many online:
- The Globewide Network Academy with over 10,000 courses and degree programs listed. A clearinghouse of information on distance learning. (http://www.gnacademy.org)
- The EdSurf site of online classes. See especially the "Virtual U" list. (http://www.helix.net/~jmtaylor/edsurf.html)
- CASO's Internet University, an index of online courses around the web. (http://www.caso.com/)
- The College Connection, another extensive listing of online courses, college programs, and online degrees. (http://www.meu.edu/cc/index.html)
- The Electronic University Network, listing 32 degrees and more than 300 courses (http://www.wcc-eun.com/index.html)
- Directory of Online Colleges, Internet Universities, and Training Institutes (http://homepages.together.net/~lifelong/)
- Distance Learning Courses and Degrees Offered by Oregon Community College Distance Education Consortium Member Colleges, Fall 1997 (http://www.lbcc.cc.or.us/occdec/index.html)
New Barriers to Access
Although computer networks break down many long-standing physical and temporal barriers to education, computers themselves are notorious for creating new kinds of barriers for students. These include computer hardware that malfunctions, difficulty in setting up software to access an educational institution or internet service provider, and encountering constant busy signals when dialing up from home. Once a student gains access the problems are not over either. Heavy online traffic can overload popular websites so that they respond very slowly if at all, and annoying drops in telephone line connections occur all too frequently. Added to these technical problems is the cost of hardware, software, and internet service providers.
Though perhaps not as intractable nor systemic, these new barriers can undercut an otherwise well designed online educational experience and lead to both student and instructor frustration. Evans and Wideman (1995) present a sharp critique of what happened in an online undergraduate economics tutorial when technical difficulties interfere with learning. Most detrimental was the loss of critical mass for student discussions: students who managed to get online found their peers who couldn't get online were not contributing; therefore, they felt less inclined to contribute themselves. The result was a downward spiral in the quality and quantity of discussion.
Therefore, providers of online programs must ensure that ample technical support is available for participants, particularly in the early stages of the program, when participants are most likely to encounter the greatest number of problems.
References
Evans, J. C., & Wideman, H. H. (1995, October). Enhancing economics education with on-line interactive tutorials. A paper presented at the annual Educom conference, Portland, OR.
Footnote 3 In the short period of time that I have been working to prepare online courses, one virtual colleges has already gone "off-the-web." I have no real understanding of the reasons, but one can only assume that there is not enough of a market, or the competition is too severe, or students have not shown enough interest to sustain attempts at offering degrees and a wide range of classes online. Below is a link to what was an award winning but now defunct virtual college (complete with the last known working link — just in case):
International University College (http://www.iuc.com)
4 Another growth area in web-based education is in the presentation of extension courses to students presently in high school and to adults seeking to complete their schooling through home study. The web offers the same advantages of access to these two groups as it does to university students. High school students will soon see web based courses in subjects their own school does not offer, courses to prepare for the Advanced Placement exams, and regular college courses offered to them for advanced credit. Adults seeking to complete their high school education will soon see courses offered over the web and courses to prepare them for the GED high school equivalency exam. Indiana University's Division of Extended Studies (http://www.extend.indiana.edu), which offers high school and some advanced credit college courses within the state and worldwide, is an example of an institution that is beginning to make use of the web for those purposes. Students can study independently online, communicate with the instructor, submit assignments, and receive course guides electronically from the university's website.