With the rising popularity of MOOCs – massive open online courses – and other cutting-edge online educational opportunities, the recent Report of the Cornell Distance Learning Committee has endorsed the university’s practices that encourage creative distance learning trials, while offering eight specific suggestions for moving forward.

The report, which advised that Cornell should thoughtfully proceed in the realm of advancing technology, was presented to Provost Kent Fuchs and to the Faculty Senate in February. The report committee was led by Laura Brown, senior vice provost for undergraduate education.

“We … live in an exciting, if uncertain, time. We do not know the future of distance learning, but [we] see that it holds much promise,” says the report’s executive summary. The group suggested a diverse portfolio of distance learning avenues, with continual rebalancing. “We must be alert to overstretching our resources. In particular, we do not want our faculty making commitments that adversely impact on-campus teaching and research.

“As part of our commitment to new opportunities, we should continue to nurture expertise in video/Web production, as well as relevant pedagogy – investments that also benefit on-campus teaching,” the report said.

The report committee acknowledged that while MOOCs can utilize technologies and strategies and can reach a larger audience than most traditional classroom teaching, these offerings do not “provide an educational experience that is equivalent to a traditional classroom.”

With new technologies to deliver online education constantly emerging, the committee said: “Our emphasis is on fruitful and diverse experimentation. … [and] the many decisions needed to meet the challenge of this new frontier in education will require an organizational structure that enhances cooperation among administration, faculty and providers of technological and instructional support.”

The report’s eight key suggestions were to:

• support diverse distance learning projects;
• proceed carefully with further edX (the website that carries Cornell MOOCs) commitments;
• not award credit for MOOCs at Cornell;
• assess the impacts of licensing MOOCs;
• expand access and generate revenue;
• pursue only high-quality distance-learning projects;
• create collaborative organizational structure; and
• interpret policies in ways that enhance innovative distance learning.

The distance learning landscape changed substantially during the eight months over which the report was written. The group concluded: “The only adequate response to such rapid changes, and the similarly fast evolution of the relevant technology and the field, is broad and open experimentation. Our investigations and discussions have convinced us that online education will be influential in the future educational scene but almost certainly not in the form that we see today.”