Distance learning is sometimes regarded as a revolutionary idea in education, but the concept of separating teacher and learner has existed, in various modes of implementation, for quite some time. In Europe, for example, several well-documented instances of teaching languages through postal services occurred in the early 1800s, although a university department dealing with this type of teaching is not noted until the latter part of the century (Curran, 1996). Not surprisingly, distance learning developed in stages corresponding to the available technology. First came what are commonly called correspondence courses, where teacher and student are separated geographically and printed course materials and assignments are exchanged via the postal service. This type of correspondence course has never gone completely out of vogue, and many extension universities still maintain a number of them on a variety of topics. Next, printed materials were supplemented with tape recorded course materials, teleconferencing, and delivery of lectures by television. Some might remember the installation of TV screens in many large lecture halls during the late 60s and 70s, and at that time there was concern that the learned professor at the front of the college classroom would gradually be replaced by the lifeless television monitors suspended from the ceiling. These fears went unrealized, and this particular mode of classroom instruction never caught on to any great extent. It has remained, however, as a staple of some distance learning programs. For instance, most University of Arizona distance learning courses-primarily in the sciences-are televised presentations of lectures delivered on campus. These offerings are supplemented by numerous noncredit courses where a series of video tapes can be rented or purchased by individuals. The latter option is quite expensive: a 12-week rental costs $2500, and purchase of the tapes is twice that amount.
    The most recent stage of distance learning, and the one to which most of my discussion here refers, is the one in which we are now immersed, where advances in computer and networking technology continue to facilitate world-wide electronic communication of audio, video, and written text materials. When this exchange is implemented over the World Wide Web, an almost limitless number of hyperlinks can be established between sites whose actual physical location can be anywhere in the world. The attraction of this most recent technology is the ease with which information can be disseminated, regardless of the location of teacher or student. In a sense, it effectively combines the capabilities of earlier technologies: written text, still or moving color images, audio signals, or a combination of all of these, can be transmitted via the Internet to or from any location in the world, complete with scores of links connecting them.
    Despite the apparent advantages of the various forms of distance education, it has generally appealed to certain students: those desiring only a few courses without the expense of residing at a university, those who wish to take advantage of the technical training a trade school might offer, older students whose work schedules might not permit attendance at daytime classes, and so on. To a large degree, students who pursue a university degree after high school still plan to do so in residence at a college or university, often in their home state. But this situation is changing. More and more state universities find themselves in the unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable position of competing with private and trade schools for students that have always traditionally gone to in-state schools. The result is that state universities can no longer count on serving the students from their own state who have traditionally comprised their student bodies. Compounding this problem is the current trend toward cutting funds for public universities. For example, a 1996 report from the Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee at The University of Arizona states that there is "$30-40 million less for basic programs and support than there was ten years ago." The report continues:

Nationally, competition for students is increasing. The proportion of high school graduates who go on to traditional higher education is flattening ... Private companies, such as Motorola, are developing their own degree granting postsecondary programs ... jobs that provide education, work-related experience, and higher wages folded into one financial aid package are certain to be attractive to many [older] students (SPBAC, 1994).

    As a response to this trend, distance learning seems an ideal way to bolster shrinking enrollments and to compete for students from other locales. Indeed, in the report just mentioned, distance learning offerings at other colleges and private firms are characterized as a "new source of competition."
    In its current stage of development, distance learning would seem a particularly potent source of competition. As the argument goes, distance learning via the Internet allows students to take a course from any location, at any time, and at the student's own pace; therefore, schools can offer online courses to unlimited numbers of distance learners. In a recent article, Norman Wagner predicts that students "will have the opportunity to acquire information when and where they desire, with the option to experience it multiple times. This will be instruction on demand, and will be time and place independent" (Wagner, 1996). Thanks to advances in digital technology, courses in music can easily be presented in this fashion, complete with sound and visual images and links to other relevant information. Thus, in the near future students might conceivably satisfy their degree requirements by taking only one or two courses in residence at a state university while taking another from a trade school 200 miles away, and yet another course from a college on the other side of the globe. Music departments, for example, might of necessity design their courses to compete with the online offerings in music from Yale or Indiana University, even if the latter are geographically distant. Distance learning that exploits the latest networking technology, then, can be seen not only as a source of increased competition, but also as a means of counteracting this trend by increasing the number of courses and programs one's own school offers.
    Along with this push to expand the distance learning offerings of universities comes a fear on the part of many dedicated professionals that they might well be modernizing themselves out of a job. After all, if all courses are offered online, what are the traditional faculty members to do? Will they even be needed in the near future, or will a college education consist of students fulfilling all their requirements through courses taught over the Internet? The traditional teacher/student educational model is very time and place dependent, since both student and teacher must be in the same location at a predetermined time for the transfer of information and ideas to occur. But since course materials can be placed on a web site at any time, and students can log on to these materials at any time from any location, this traditional model seems to be, at least on the surface, in danger of becoming hopelessly inefficient and obsolete. Given this situation, can online graduation ceremonies be far behind? College courses might soon be completely automated: students merely log on via their computers at any time they choose, take courses at their own pace, test whenever and wherever they happen to be, and then apply for and receive their diplomas--complete with ornate graphics and lettering-by electronic mail. And if they choose, they can take place in the college's virtual commencement ceremonies.
    Is this really the future of education, and more specifically, music education, in the college or university setting? Let's begin our effort to answer this question by examining one course in a typical undergraduate music curriculum to determine its suitability for this type of delivery. A music student's first contact with their required music courses is often some kind of fundamentals or music theory course. Traditionally, these courses include basic instruction in tonal harmony, ear training, sightsinging, and they sometimes also include a component reaching basic keyboard skills. Delivery of course materials is accomplished with printed texts, and class time is devoted to lectures explaining concepts in greater detail, listening to musical examples that demonstrate these concepts, drilling on aural skills, answering student questions about homework, new concepts, and so on. These classes also usually include frequent tests or quizzes designed to track student progress in these areas.
    Our task, then, is to determine the feasibility of delivering course materials electronically so that this type of class could be offered strictly as a distance learning option. First, the printed text materials one usually associates with this type of course could easily be placed on a series of web pages where they could be accessed at any time from any place. Students could then progress through the material at their own pace. Of course, this scenario sounds a great deal like a correspondence course, where a book is simply mailed to the student. In a sense this is true, although the linking of different subjects and supplemental materials on various web pages can make access to the materials both efficient and compelling. Aural skills material presents more of a challenge. Although printed scores for the examples and the sound files to play them can be delivered via the Internet, it would be difficult to assess student progress without personal contact at some point. Evaluation of progress in written and aural skills could also be accomplished to a certain extent by assignments and testing materials delivered via the Internet. The problem here becomes one of maintaining the integrity of the test itself, since instructors must assume students completed the assignments and tests themselves.
    But here a fundamental question arises: how much of our teaching is mere information delivery, and how much can be categorized as something much more abstract, namely the student/teacher relationship with which we are all familiar? In Wagner's 1996 discussion of the "new instructional model," he states:

• In many classrooms, information delivery often is accomplished by faculty reading from and elaborating on their notes while students simultaneously listen and copy the information into their own notebooks... These practices generally do not represent efficient use of faculty time or talent for dissemination of information.

    On the surface, Wagner's point seems to make perfect sense: why should faculty waste their time in the mere delivery of information to their students when this delivery could be accomplished so much more efficiently by electronic means? But I find his statement disturbing because it seems to equate mere "information delivery" and that vital-and very human exchange I call "teaching." Teaching has always involved a certain amount of "information delivery." Why else do we choose an appropriate course textbook or assign a project in which students must search the library or Internet for sources? To equate the two, however, seems inappropriate, since such a statement fails to recognize several important components of any student/teacher relationship: the exchange of creative ideas, sound logic, and intellectual point of view. Indeed, if we consider ourselves only the deliverers of facts or information, then I believe we are ignoring some very basic responsibilities to our students.
    With this thought in mind, let us return now to our discussion of the basic music theory course. Course materials can be disseminated very efficiently by electronic means. But can an instructor anticipate all questions students might have and include the answers in the materials? And what about questions that might be spontaneously generated by another student's question or comment? A certain amount of this type of interaction can be provided with a class listserv, as long as we remember that a listserv is only as efficient as the regularity with which students check their e-mail. Let's not forget, though, that there are aspects of a classroom setting that are desirable and productive for both student and teacher. With the aural skills portion of our hypothetical music class, student/teacher interaction is also important. Computerized drill and practice programs are very productive in building necessary skills, but I can recall countless times when students came to me with an ear training or sightsinging problem personal to them and which therefore required a personalized solution. The point is this: electronic delivery of information might work well for highly motivated students a majority of the time, but I believe there will always be aspects of the traditional student/teacher relationship-beyond mere information delivery-that many students will prefer, especially in a skills-based class such as I have discussed.
    Of course, certain undergraduate music classes place less emphasis on skills and more upon historical facts and chronologies. Classes such as these are more suited to electronic delivery of course materials. Evaluation tends to take the form of several tests per term, not the continual testing that often accompanies basic skills classes. With the capabilities of the Internet and hyperlinks, course material can be presented in a compelling way, and communication with the instructor can be accomplished via electronic mail. In short, a class such as music history is more suitable to electronic delivery than the skills class just mentioned, particularly to those students who want to take the class from a distance. This is not to say that an electronic version can replace in all respects the interaction in a traditional class of this type, only that with this type of class the match is closer than with others. At this point I will mention only briefly the individual applied lessons on the student's instrument of choice. While it might be increasingly possible to emulate the person-to-person interaction that occurs in such instruction, I find it difficult to imagine that a majority of music students will prefer to receive instruction from their teachers via a television screen. After all, it is this close interaction between students and applied teachers that distinguishes many music programs from other academic areas where huge, impersonal lectures are the norm.
    Let's take stock for a moment. We can probably agree that course materials for certain classes are suitable for delivery as distance learning courses, such as those requiring little testing and which allow students to complete much of the work on their own. Less suitable are those courses requiring frequent testing and student/teacher interaction, such as the basic skills courses and applied lessons that are a part of most undergraduate music curricula. But let's not forget that in all these courses, there are many positive aspects of the teacher/student relationship that compel students to seek out coursework in traditional settings. Might we not conclude, then, that even as the role of distance learning increases-as it is certain to -it will still appeal most strongly only to a limited portion of those desiring a college education?
    Earlier I mentioned the fears that faculty have about being replaced by computerized course offerings and distance learning. Suppose for a moment that the class you teach, perhaps with a total of 50 students, will soon be offered as a distance learning option. The usual argument is that this type of offering will allow an unlimited number of students to take the course, at any time and from any place. But instead of reducing the need for faculty, I submit that distance learning courses might indeed have the exact opposite effect. After all, if the enrollment of your class suddenly were to double, one could reasonably assume that the professor's workload would increase considerably. The danger to faculty members, I believe, comes from cost cutting measures typical in today's university setting. Frugal administrators might choose to employ low salaried teaching assistants to grade materials and communicate with distance learners so long as a number of them could be supervised by one faculty member.
    And is the distance learning course really time independent? Perhaps in some cases, but imagine if you will the organizational nightmare of keeping track of 200 different students, all taking the same course but at different rates, all beginning and ending at different times, and so on. Suddenly, our time and place independent distance learning course begins to resemble an unstructured fiasco. One successful course delivered over the Internet is an Art Appreciation course offered through Southern Utah University by Mandy Brooks. Professor Brooks structures the course so that students must be online at a specified time to discuss the lecture notes she delivers over the Internet. Her students purchase text materials by mail, and generally the online course progresses at a rate similar to a classroom course. Although Professor Brooks administers weekly online tests in her class, tests in some online courses are administered by a proctor in the student's locale. Of course, dates for online tests can vary, but if distance learners follow a similar temporal sequence for their own studies, then the two modes of instruction are similar in both time and place requirements. The music course I am readying for distance learning-Form and Structure of Twentieth-Century Music ... ~will be structured in a similar way: students will purchase the same text materials as do resident students. While they may actually move through the course materials at their own speed, I plan to require online students to participate in the class listserv. Given this requirement, which is designed to provide an important component in the distance learning experience-interaction with the professor and the large group-it might prove most beneficial for online students to maintain a pacing similar to the resident class, simply so that they would be able to share topics in a timely fashion. 
    When one looks closely at distance learning in the context of today's university setting, it seems to deliver less than it promises. Distance learning is promoted as being time and place independent, yet many distance learning courses are offered only during a specific temporal span, and in some of them students are required to be online at a certain time. New computer technologies are becoming ever more efficient at the delivery of information to and from anywhere in the globe, but information delivery is but one component of what one usually defines as teaching. Instructors in most distance learning offerings must still grapple with how to provide interaction between students and instructors for discussion of course materials. Professors worry about being replaced, but in institutions that embrace distance learning, there might very well be an increase in demand for professors in certain areas. And as regards cost, a study of open and distance learning institutions in Europe found that distance education was in fact significantly less expensive than residence courses, but only after a break even point of student numbers is reached. Before that threshold is attained, many distance courses are actually more expensive to plan and administer. To be fair, most of my comments here focus upon resident universities that supplement their traditional courses with distance learning opportunities, not universities whose entire purpose is to offer learning at a distance.
    To return to the question I posed in the title of this paper: is distance learning a revolution or fad? I believe the answer lies somewhere between the two extremes. The technological advances in computer networking capabilities will continue to be refined and developed, which will most certainly change our methods for delivering information to resident as well as distance learners. This wealth of information at our fingertips will allow more courses to be offered as distance learning options when this mode of delivery is appropriate to specific course objectives. But I believe it is important to remember that while such courses will be attractive to specific groups, they will not replace completely the traditional student/teacher model. I caution against embracing wholeheartedly these potentially useful technologies without first examining curricula very carefully to determine how these technologies can best enhance each class. It is easy to be so enamored with new methods that one forgets the so called "old" methods are not only worthwhile, but in many cases desirable, compelling, and certainly worth preserving.

References

Curran, C. (1996). The Potential Cost-effectiveness of Tertiary Open and Distance Learning. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee (SPBAC), The University of Arizona. (1996, April). Open letter to University of Arizona faculty and staff.

Wagner, N. (1996, June). Telecommunications and the changing nature of instructional delivery. Syllabus, 10-12.