Friday, August 31, 2001

Teachers' Union Report Criticizes Businesslike Approach to Distance Education By DAN CARNEVALE The American Federation of Teachers is releasing a report today warning that quality could suffer as colleges and universities create a business culture within which to develop distance-education programs. The teachers union has been wary of distance learning in the past, releasing guidelines stating that students shouldn't get their undergraduate degrees completely online. This new report, "A Virtual Revolution: Trends in the Expansion of Distance Education," says too many distance courses center on teaching a collection of facts, rather than on giving students a broader understanding of a topic and different ways of thinking about it. The report makes no secret of its conclusions: The cover depicts a bunch of rats, some of them carrying signs with computers or money on them, scampering from one side of the document to the other. Inside, the report criticizes distance programs that treat students as customers. "There is a real danger that the curriculum will not be coherent, rigorous enough, or broad enough to meet the student's long-term interests," the report says. In addition, it says, the traditional role of the professor is being "unbundled" by online-course creators, and its parts are being doled out to technology experts and instructional designers when online courses are being created. The principal author of the report was Thomas J. Kriger, director of research and legislation for United University Professions, which is an affiliate of the A.F.T. In an interview, he said distance education isn't inherently bad. Systems like the State University of New York, where United University Professions is based, have appropriately blended online education with the rest of the curriculum, and have allowed professors to remain in control, he said. But faculty groups around the nation need to watch out for institutions that adopt a business-sector approach to their online programs and create "cookie-cutter" programs, Mr. Kriger said. It's the standardization of online education that robs the students of the diversity of knowledge that professors bring to the classroom, he said. "You're moving away from this notion of education as a craft, and you're heading to this educational assembly line," Mr. Kriger said. But Nicholas Allen, provost and chief academic officer at University of Maryland University College, said the quality concerns the A.F.T. has with online education could also apply to traditional education. Lecture-hall-style classes in which 500 students are taught by a teaching assistant are of poorer quality than most online courses, he said. Institutions like UMUC adopt only business practices that improve quality and efficiency, with students giving the final judgment on the value of the course, Mr. Allen said. "We want to design services for students and faculty that will be exemplars for others in the industry," he said. "Hopefully the technology will enable us to do that." The A.F.T. plans to make the report available today at http://www.aft.org/higher_ed/technology/ Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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