Trailblazing Among the Traditionalists: The Joys and Perils of Innovation

E.W. Brody, Ed.D.

Distance learning never has been a welcome concept among academic traditionalists. Successful "campus without walls" programs have been operated for decades by state-operated colleges and universities in New York, Illinois, and Califomia. They have been joined more recently by increasing numbers of non-traditional programs using computer-based public and proprietary delivery systems.

On-line searches indicate that that more than 1,000 courses today are available through the Internet, America Online and Compuserve. Some are offered by little-known institutions. Most originate with universities such as Dartmouth, Aubum, George Mason, North Dakota State, Northern Arizona, Pennsylvania State, California State, Akron, and the Universities of Florida, Wisconsin, California, Texas, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington.

Other institutions, including those of Tennessee, nevertheless have been slow to embrace alternative delivery systems. Some attribute their reluctance to academic inferiority complexes that discourage innovation. Others credit fiscal and academic measurement systems in which productivity is counted in contact hours. (Obviously, one can't have contact hours without contact.)

The origins of the traditionalist world view are less important, however, than the burdens it imposes on those who contemplate innovation and ask not "why?" but "why not?" The latter point of inquiry inevitably produces two predictable responses I first heard enumerated by our vice president for finance in a graduate seminar almost 20 years ago: "The first is 'we've never done it that way,"' Dr. Eugene Smith told us. "The second is 'we've always done it the other way."'

The extent to which this philosophy has become holy writ at The University of Memphis never was wholly apparent before the Department of Journalism undertook to offer its masters program through CompuServe Information Service three years ago. We had been encouraged to innovate. "Make the program work and the resources to develop it will follow," we were told.

Statements of this sort fell on believing ears in Journalism. Unlike many in our discipline, the journalism program at The University of Memphis is professionally oriented. We exist to equip students to succeed in the professional world. Our faculty almost universally come to us with extensive professional experience and our allegiances thus tend to be skewed toward disciplinary rather than academic perspectives.

Our on-line program was conceived as a pragmatic response to practitioner needs. Urban perspectives to the contrary notwithstanding, the bulk of the nation's mass media is domiciled in rural and suburban communities distant from college and university campuses. Most professionals interested in accelerating the development of their careers, or merely keeping pace with fast-changing technologies, thus find themselves academically disadvantaged.

This was and is the need we sought to address. It would be nice to say "we have succeeded." The best that can be said today is that fortuitously changing circumstances have afforded us an opportunity to succeed. Early on, we were perceived as a band of heretics who somehow had managed to gain admission to the temple. We're still less than wholly welcome at family reunions - and I've personally been declared persona non grate in certain administrative quarters -- but our efforts now are at least tolerated by our colleagues.

The change in attitude was produced by two factors: demography and what might be called "political clout." The demographic change was inevitable. Postsecondary education is afflicted by the bust that followed the baby boom, and the so called "echo" of the boom will not be clearly heard in colleges and universities before the tum of the century. The University of Memphis is no exception, and declining enrollments in our on campus programs doubtless have made our efforts more welcome than otherwise might have been the case.

While others doubtless will disagree, my personal perception nevertheless is that our program will survive and grow as much out of fortuitous political circumstances as out of economic need. Late in 1996, The Department of Journalism entered into an agreement with the National Newspaper Association to provide undergraduate journalism skills courses for NNA members' editorial and advertising departments. This agreement was presented to the NNA membership at the group's annual meeting in Nashville as the crowning achievement of the incumbent president's term of office. The association's president at the time was R. Jack Fishman, president and editor of The Citizen Tribune in Morristown, TN. Mr. Fishman was and is a member of the Tennessee Board of Regents, which governs The University of Memphis, and serves as chairman of the board's finance committee.

The department's relationship with Mr. Fishman and the National Newspaper Association - initiated by him rather than the department -may or may not have contributed to the survival of our on-line curricula. Occasional comments to the effect that I'd not want to tell Mr. Fishman that we could not or would not fulfill our contractual commitments nevertheless proved unusually effective in eliciting cooperation from those predisposed toward the status quo. The NNA contract is a relatively recent development, however, and the prior history of our efforts is of at least equal interest.

The Department of Journalism's on-line initiative began at the masters level, prompted in part by inquiries from professionals whose circumstances precluded their participating in our on-campus degree program and in part by faculty members' interests in the personal computer as an alternative academic delivery system. Our decision to use Compuserve Information Service (CIS) as a delivery medium was a function of three factors. First, the sysops (system operators or moderators) of two CIS user groups - the Public Relations and Marketing Forum (PRSIG) and the Journalism Forum (JFORUM) -were willing to provide on-line conference rooms and libraries for our use. Second, the combined active memberships of the user groups, or forums as they're popularly called - totaled some 50,000 - all potential candidates for our program. Finally, CIS software met our needs. Split screen technology permitted users to prepare their comments in one frame while reading those of classmates and instructor in another. Log files capture verbatim transcripts of every class meeting. And the CIS e-mail system supports individual and group messaging as well as file transfer.

Retrospectively, the decision to use CIS was more beneficial than had been anticipated. A number of administrative obstacles had to be overcome, but no additional university resources were necessary to initiate course delivery. Faculty computers were equipped with modems. CIS forum moderators forgave on-line charges for faculty in PRSIG and JFORUM. CIS software was free to faculty and students alike, and while CIS on-line charges were somewhat higher than those of Internet access providers, few students encountered long distance costs because of the breadth of the CIS telephone network.

The university's move to the Internet this year, as undergraduate courses were initiated under the National Newspaper Association contract, proved more difficult from technological and administrative perspectives. Those involved in developing the on-line program by then had become accustomed to dealing with unanticipated obstacles. Assurances of administrative support for the department's entrepreneurial efforts had dissipated much earlier.

Problems first arose over conflicting definitions of the term "new academic program." The Department of Journalism took the position that it was initiating a new delivery system rather than a new program. All on-line courses were identical to those taught on campus. All instructors were full time faculty members. On line and on-campus students were required to meet the same admission criteria and performance standards.

Some administrators agreed; others did not. The latter included the then-acting dean of the Graduate School. On his own initiative, he took his argument to the Tennessee Board of Regents, whose blessing is required on all "new programs." For more than a year, as a result, the Department of Journalism was limited to offering graduate courses rather than a graduate degree program. These conditions created a distinction rather than a difference (the degree program requires 30 to 36 semester hours while the department has offered no more than six courses of three semester hours each in any calendar year) but proved to be harbingers of things to come.

Promised support from the university's public relations staff in disseminating information about the program was limited to traditional news media. No effort was made to communicate with members of the "on-line community" through the Internet, the several proprietary on-line services other than Compuserve, or the proliferating media serving those audiences. Public relations faculty in the Department of Journalism stepped into the breach, but "the story" and the program by then were several months old and were treated as such. by the media.

Responses from other components of the university were mixed. While less than obvious at the time, levels of cooperation and support varied primarily with the extent to which the functions of other departments were linked to traditional academic cycles. Problems arose involving Graduate Admissions, Records, and Information Systems, for example, although the university library, the Bursar's office, and the University Store experienced no difficulty in adjusting to meet the on-line program's six-week (vs. traditional semester) class scheduling.

While handling applications from prospective on-line students without regard for deadlines applicable to their on-campus counterparts, for example, the university's Graduate Admissions office has been unable to segregate the applications to a point at which requests for status reports can be readily met. On-line students often experience delays in receiving grade reports and up-to-date transcripts because records are updated only three times a year at the end of the Fall, Spring and Summer sessions.

The Bursar's office, in contrast, quickly installed a process through which the Department of Journalism is notified as remittances are received. Timely notification enables the department to authorize text and materials shipments on the part of the University Store, which gives these requests priority handling. Similarly, the university library quickly adjusted procedures to give students complete access to all resources. Books are sent to students by mail. Interlibrary loan and research requests are transmitted via e-mail. The library attempts to handle all requests within 24 hours and only rarely has not met that objective.

Differences between on-line and on-campus classes requiring procedural adjustments universally are administrative rather than educational. All were created to meet student needs and preferences, as identified through surveys conducted in the two Compuserve forums that served as hosts to on-line classes during the early months of the program.

Those involved expressed strong preferences for six-week rather than 12-tol3-week course formats despite the greater intensity level that concentrated courses generated. Tuesdays, 241 Wednesdays, and Thursdays were - and are - preferred for class meetings. Classes meet from 8 to 11 p.m. Central time in order to permit participation by students from all continental time zones.

Almost without exception, students have been practicing professionals in print journalism, electronic journalism, advertising, and public relations. The exceptions have been a physician - an obstetrician - who on several occasions left the virtual classroom for 20 to 30 minutes to deliver babies, and a middle manager for the European Union, who came to class at 3 a.m. Brussels time.

Time factors have proven to be a significant problem. Enrollment levels have not increased as rapidly as anticipated, precluding our offering multiple sections of classes. The single section approach demands that classes meet from 9 p.m. to midnight on the east coast and from 6 to 9 p.m. on the west. Inquiries continue to be received from Africa, Europe and Asia, but they have been too few to meet minimum class size requirements - six at the graduate level, 12 at the undergraduate.

These circumstances hopefully will change as the larger population of Internet users become aware of the program's 11 .. existence. internet usage has more than quadrupled since our initial decision to use Compuserve as a delivery platform, while the proprietary services, including Compuserve, have suffered significant losses.

Some two dozen enrolled in one or more of the first six graduate on-line courses. Most continue in the program despite interruptions associated with childbirth, job changes, and similar events that often attend part time graduate students. Several are expected to receive their degrees this year.

The relatively small enrollments have been more a product of economic constraints than less-than-enthusiastic administrative support. Lack of adequate resources has precluded the sort of advertising - in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere -- that accompanied Syracuse University's recent launch of a competing distance learning program. Syracuse faculty claim higher enrollment levels but the programs differ in several respects. Syracuse requires that students spend two weeks in residence but the remainder of the program consists of correspondence work. The University of Memphis has no residency requirement but scheduled classes meet on line in real time.

An aggressive on-line publicity effort targeting Internet listservs and newsgroups as well as subscribers to proprietary online services was undertaken by journalism faculty a few weeks ago. The effort coincided with the "relocation" of graduate courses to the Internet and the start of undergraduate courses there, a process that proved more difficult than anticipated.

The Department of Journalism had secured what were considered to be firm commitments for necessary support from other university components before entering into the National Newspaper Association agreement. A server, software, and technical support involving expenditures totaling some $40,000 were involved.

The contract was signed, but the commitment proved less than binding. First no funds were available for the server. Journalism faculty persuaded academic administrators to make that purchase. Then there was no money for software. The university's Extended Programs department covered that shortfall. Then the Department of Journalism -with more than 300 students and two of 13 faculty on leave - was asked to staff the technical support function.

These obstacles were overcome, although not without ill feelings, and faculty were preparing as this was written to implement what ultimately may become a true virtual classroom. Netscape's Navigator 3.01 and The ForeFront Group's RoundTable 2.0 were the first software programs deployed. Clients for both PC and Macintosh can be downloaded by faculty and students without charge. The university purchased a RoundTable server license for some $1,200.

RoundTable provides a white board as well as videotext. Faculty load documents to be displayed as Intemet pages and place them on the white board as needed. One-way (faculty-to-student) audio is to be added in the near future and plans call for two-way audio and video as soon as bandwidth obstacles can be overcome.

Other software now in developer beta testing also may be added to facilitate on-line testing and other functions. Among features most sought after by faculty: a timed testing capability accompanied by random question selection that would enable automated administration and scoring of objective tests. To date, most on-line examinations consist of timed essay tests requiring that students synthesize the information they've digested rather than reading and regurgitating textbook content.

Concern over the integrity of on-line testing systems has been expressed on several occasions. Faculty believe that questions requiring synthesis of information coupled with time limits that preclude students seeking answers in books provide adequate safeguards.

"How do you know that it's your students who are answering the questions?" There are no guarantees, of course, but it's unlikely that students would hire substitutes to participate in online class meetings and take tests. Class participation usually is weighted heavily for grading purposes because computer software captures and stores every word that appears on the monitor and resulting files can be retained indefinitely.

Faculty consider the on-line delivery system as secure as any on campus, especially in the wake of an incident in which on-campus students hired "ringers" to take tests for them. The deception would not have been detected had another student not betrayed the conspirators to a faculty member.

No system is perfect, of course, but the risk of cheating is inadequate to disqualify a delivery system that can bring postsecondary education, continuing education, and professional development - for-credit, for CEU credit and not-for-credit - to a huge international constituency of unserved and underserved professionals. Demographically-driven declines in numbers of high school graduates add an economic argument in favor of alternative academic delivery systems, of course, but the obligation to better prepare students for increasingly competitive occupational environment and enable them to maintain their competitiveness over time should be sufficient to encourage academics to develop and use every available delivery system to those ends.

[TOP]