Katherine Ramos Baker, Lewis-Clark State College

As a participant in a major federal, regional and state commitment to distance education, I have become increasingly aware of the applications of technology for distance education and for the enhancement of more traditional approaches to education. That awareness has led to a need for definition and understanding of the impact of issues of distance education on the teaching and learning process.

Distance education and the need for distance education presented itself in the form of correspondence courses in the 1920’s; courses via television were commonplace in the 1960’s (Gilbert, 1995). With the advent of courses offered by microwave, two-way audio and/or video, interactive materials, the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the concern for the changing face of the means and the media of teaching and learning has become and important topic for discussion.

A working definition of distance education from Steven Gilbert, Director, Technology Projects, American Association for Higher Education, is an appropriate place to begin: "Distance education is any form of teaching and learning in which teacher and learner are not in the same place at the same time, with information technology their likely connector" (Gilbert, 1995).

Other descriptions of distance education might be: time-and-space independent, time-and-space flexible. Terms such as the virtual university and asynchronous computer teleconferencing have emerged to try to describe this technological phenomenon (Hottois, 1996).

Where is distance education?

We are all familiar with the commercial depicting the pastoral, idyllic life of an Italian vintner who informs a family member that he just received his degree from a major U. S. university. The commercial has several subtexts:

While I may not be "buying" everything that the commercial is selling, it does underscore a trend in education that cannot be ignored.

In January 1996, in a seven-site Idaho teleconference on the virtual university (Western Institute for Learning), issues of distance education in the Northwest and in Idaho were addressed by six institutions of higher learning in Idaho, the Idaho State Board of Education, the governer of Idaho, the colleges’ and universities’ president’s council of the region, and U.S.West Communications. According to the recommended time line by the Western Governors Association for the Western Institute for Learning (virtual university), there will be an adoption of interstate agreements for a virtual system by December 1997.

LCSC received a $1.6 million grant from the U. S. federal government’s Title III program to create a model Integrated Learning Network to enhance access to its general education core courses beyond the physical boundaries of the Lewiston campus. Lewis-Clark State College has been identified as an exceptional college for undergraduate liberal arts education, with core as the foundation of that education. ("America’s Best Colleges," 1996). One component of the Title III grant is faculty participation in The Center for Teaching Excellence, a faculty development seminar with technological instruction and support for faculty, staff and administration participants.

There have been 38 faculty, staff and administrators that have received training through The Center for Teaching Excellence (K. L. Martin, personal communication, Jan.-Feb. 1996; Mayton, 1995). The CTE is a semester-long seminar with three goals:

Goal One: Development of Instructional Design and Technology Skills of Participants. "The primary purpose of this seminar is to provide participants with relevant and timely knowledge and skills related to instructional design and the selection, development, and untilization of instructional technologies" (Mayton, 1995).

Seminar participants were introduced to instructional design principles, reviewing educational methods and their applications to various academic disciplines.

Goal Two: Development and Refinement of Courses for the Integrated Learning Network.

During the course of the seminar, each professor redesigned a course for delivery through the ILN. Seminar meetings consisted of concepts of instructional design and the introduction of technologies available for alternative delivery. Principles of instructional design become more concrete through the writing of the Course Design Document, which deals with instructional goals, learning outcomes, conditions of learning, activities and interactions, instructional resources, and materials for evaluation. Presentation and interactive technologies introduced during the seminar included: searching the Internet, the use of bulletin boards and chat rooms, browsing the World Wide Web, designing and posting home pages on the Web, Authorware, Persuasion and PowerPoint, Photoshop, audiotaping and videotaping principles. Part of the introduction to the various technologies included hands-on experimentation and the discussion of appropriate uses of each of these new tools.

Goal Three: Professional Communication and Collaboration Regarding Faculty Development and the ILN.

The Fall 1995 seminar had two two-hour meeting each week, with optional meetings on a variety of technologies available to seminar participants and to other faculty and staff members at Friday noon meetings. The Fall 1995 seminar consisted of faculty from: art, music, theatre; social science; natural sciences; English composition; business technologies and business ethics. During these meetings, and also in informal settings (that resulted from professional relationships that were encouraged as a result of the seminar), cross-discipline discussion evolved regarding types of distance education, appropriate uses of current technology, and student needs and expectations of courses delivered in alternative formats. These discussions led to faculty using both "high tech" and "high touch" approaches to learning and teaching, experimenting with combinations of newer technologies and with more traditional forms, methods and materials for instruction. The course, FP 150: Introduction to the Arts, which has a team-teaching approach, uses:

Our colleague in natural science, in addition to chat rooms and instruction via two-way audio and two-way video, is requiring four Saturday class meetings on campus. Our English composition cohort member, has the course assignments for the ILN version of the course coincide with the on-campus meetings and requires some on-campus meetings for the students for group discussions.

Currently, LCSC has outreach sites at: Lewiston, DeSmet, Orofino, Coeur d’Alene, Rexburg, and Grangeville. Students may come to outreach sites to use dual-platform computers with CD-ROM capabilities that are connected to the Internet, or they may enroll through the ILN and use their own home computers and modems and their individual accounts (through LCSC e-mail accounts or through accounts acquired through commerical providers) to connect to the Internet (K. L. Martin, personal communication, Jan.-Feb. 1996).

Several of the technologies and software which we have been using for the ILN are easily used to enhance traditionally-taught courses. As I was going through the seminar, students in each of my classes were curious as to what kinds of technologies we were using. When I first posted my Web Page, I gave them the URL, and told them that they could check to see what I was going to do for the "Introduction to the Arts" course. The response from students in applied lessons, performance ensembles, and survey of music were the same: How do I get connected? What are you going to put on the Web for us? How can we browse the Web? Where can we go on the Web to find out more about music? What CD-ROM programs will you design for us? If we are interested in listening to more music or more types of music, where do we go? Where can we read more? What is a MIDI lab, and how do I get to use it?

As a result of this student feedback, I am presently posting on the Web study notes and other materials for the survey course, with "For further reading" and "For other listening" sections under development. The ensembles will have listening lessons posted especially for them, with notes about places on other pages. The applied lessons, for which there have always been assigned listening, will be more formalized through Web postings. MIDI lab tours are forming for mid-semester. Also, as a result of the Title III training and our involvement in The New Media Centers, CD-ROM and multimedia presentation materials for the online Introduction to the Arts are currently under development in consultation with Prentice-Hall (Coulter, 1995).