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| From left, Brian L. Hawkins, president of EduCAUSE, speaks during the April 25 faculty forum on distance learning, while panel members William Arms, professor of computer science, and Barry Carpenter, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, look on in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography |
As if there weren't enough questions about distance learning, an outside speaker with impressive credentials brought a few more to Cornell last week.
The second faculty forum on distance learning, held April 25 in Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall, was devoted to a talk by Brian Hawkins, president of EduCAUSE, an organization devoted to encouraging the use of new technology in education.
At a previous forum, Feb. 29, many faculty members expressed misgivings about the university's plan to create a for-profit corporation, known as e-Cornell, to market distance-learning courses under the Cornell name. There were worries about how this might affect academic standards and the workload of faculty, and there were complaints that the faculty had not been consulted enough about the proposal. At its March 10 meeting, the Cornell Board of Trustees approved the creation of e-Cornell, but without any financial commitment and with the qualification that several faculty committees be consulted on various aspects of the plan; and in early April, President Hunter Rawlings announced a new Provost's Advisory Committee on Distance Learning, which includes seven faculty members. (See stories in the March 16 and April 13 editions of the Cornell Chronicle.)
At the April 25 forum, attended by some 50 people, the questions and concerns were more philosophical.
Before joining EduCAUSE, Hawkins was senior vice president for academic planning and administrative affairs at Brown University and formerly was vice president of computing and information services there. Polley McClure, Cornell's vice president for information technologies, introduced him as, "a true scholar of the management of higher education."
Hawkins began by reporting that almost everywhere he goes, educators are saying about distance learning: "The train is pulling out of the station, and we'd better get on it." He concluded by saying that, before we jump on, "we'd better know which train we're getting on and where it's going."
In between he painted a picture of a world in which distance learning will be common, laid out many questions this will raise and suggested that no one knows the answers yet.
Universities like Cornell, he said, will get into distance learning -- or as he calls it, "distributed learning," a term that includes the use of electronic technology to reach both local and distant students -- in order to use the technology to improve teaching and learning, to increase capacity to meet a growing population, to make money and to serve the public good.
He then spent considerable time questioning assumptions that distance learning will make money. The assumptions are based, he said, on projections of a vast market of potential students: Right now, there are about 16 million "traditional students" who go to college more or less straight from high school. As the baby-boomer echo comes along, that group is expected to grow by 4 million, and this will supposedly demand additional college capacity. It's also estimated that there will be some 28 million adult learners seeking to upgrade their skills and retrain in a world where the average person may have seven different careers over a lifetime. By one prediction, typical workers should spend about 20 percent of their time relearning. Finally, because the Internet knows no boundaries, American distance learning could reach a market of 100 million people outside the United States.
But, Hawkins argued, at least half of the international students will be kept away by language and cultural barriers. And many of the adult learners will be interested in very practical courses, which they can get from already established, specialty institutions. The pool will be further diminished by those who lack the ability or willingness to pay.
"There's something out there," he said. "How much of it is paid-for credit hours is open to discussion."
From there, Hawkins raised a series of questions about just how a distance-learning world will work:
Hawkins frequently qualified his questions with phrases like "but this might not apply to Cornell." But with that caveat, he suggested, "I don't think the strategy of every campus on its own is going to work." He noted that several other institutions are forming consortia to enter the market and capitalize on economies of scale. He also warned that Cornell should not expect to tap the entire marketplace. "Higher education is not a single marketplace," he said. "The world is not all like Cornell."
Making this new kind of education work, he said, will require new structures, and given all the uncertainties, the new structures will need to be "nimble, agile and flexible."
Unfortunately, he added, "universities aren't good at these things -- partnering and being flexible."
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