Expanding Access to Learning: The Role of Virtual Universities
center.rpi.edu
By Carol A. Twigg
-The paper first discusses how and why the collaborative model has become the default model in virtual university initiatives despite differences in the drivers behind their establishment and the functions they perform, and it raises questions about the efficacy of that model for meeting state needs.
-The paper then identifies and discusses five critical success factors drawn from the experiences of the existing VUCs that, when combined, can create the most effective approach to increasing access and promoting economic development within any given state.
-Building on this delineation, the paper then describes a new, entrepreneurial approach to virtual university initiatives that is based on a system of targeted incentives rather than on a collaborative model.
-Finally, the paper presents a number of case studies. Three of them—CCCOnline, the Tennessee Board of Regents Online Degree Programs, and UMassOnline-exemplify the most-successful VUC efforts to date. One—University of Maryland University College (UMUC)—illustrates the issues surrounding the dominance of one online institution within a state. Another elaborates strategies behind scalable online instructional models. Two others—KYVU and MVU—describe how both prominent VUCs have moved beyond a focus on higher education to include other segments of the state's education economy.
quotes:
Among the many different drivers behind existing VUC efforts are:
-Coping with increased numbers of traditional-age students
-Serving educationally underserved communities
-Offering opportunities for degree completion to those who have attended college but failed to graduate
-Providing for more than occasional bilateral agreements for transfer of credit between institutions
-Affording nontraditional career professionals and workforce development candidates access to higher education
-Providing streamlined access to the state's institutions via a portal
-Creating a mechanism to offer degrees not offered by existing institutions
-Taking advantage of online learning to meet enrollment growth at less cost
-Overcoming the possibility that the state's institutions will be left behind in the new, highly competitive online environment
The establishment of WGU, coupled with the accelerated growth of the University of Phoenix, made every state take a long hard look at the stand-alone model. Would creating a new, independent institution be the best way to deal with the expressed educational needs of states? Such a model would seem to be a wonderful vehicle for eliminating the barriers that were preventing learners from reaching their goals in a reasonable timeframe and at a reasonable cost. Many state leaders also believed that competition from an innovative and entrepreneurial virtual learning structure would create change and accelerate responses by established providers. What most states have concluded, however, is that stand-alone virtual university initiatives are too expensive to initiate and sustain both fiscally and politically.
Many in higher education say the ability to grant degrees is the one remaining asset that existing institutions have in this new, competitive world of online education, and so it is one that should be jealously guarded. By offering degrees, the new entity would be foursquare in competition with the state's other institutions. Having a separate virtual institution would likely mean taking resources away from already-taxed colleges and universities. The virtual institution would become just another new institution at the trough competing with other institutions for scarce resources. A separate public degree-granting institution would face struggles with existing institutions that would view it as somewhere between a nuisance and a serious threat that needed to be destroyed. One by one, states unanimously decided that finding a way to meet state educational needs without competing head-to-head with existing institutions would be an easier way to proceed. Thus, the collaborative model was born.
A major strength and a major weakness of America's higher education institutions is their independent competitiveness. Some have characterized the business of higher education in America as a cottage industry. After all, there are nearly 4,000 institutions. By definition, they do not thrive on cooperation and collaboration. Autonomy, perception of quality, and competition for students and for resources, to name a few, are factors that are deeply ingrained in the culture of higher education.
...despite an explosion in online activity, it appears that most of today's enrollment in VUCs consists of current students who are engaged in an alternative option to classroom learning. . . . Although providing online alternatives can improve each institution's quality of service to students, doing so is a long way from serving the burgeoning needs of the knowledge economy. Some would argue that time shifting (taking courses online versus in a classroom) benefits working adults and thus increases access, and that is certainly true. But most states have funded VUCs with the goal of serving students who could not be served through traditional structures rather than encouraging time shifting by existing students.
Recognizing that their curriculum development process is slow and cumbersome, many institutions take their first steps toward online offerings by opting for the easiest approach: adapting an existing degree program for distance delivery. State consortia then link these offerings together. What is needed is a shift in the culture of higher education toward recognition that off-campus programs are different from on-campus programs and demand different approaches.
The cost of initiating and operating a VUC can be reasonable with tight, sound management, but a business model coupled with for-profit management techniques is required. Relatively few public institutions are managed in that way, and public VUCs are of the same breed. What turns out to be the most important success factor is a combination of a clear focus on serving new students (those previously unable to attend existing campuses), an incentive system to gain campus participation, and a business plan to support ongoing operations. New programs can begin only when there is evidence that the revenue to support the program will immediately begin to flow.
As VUCs have grown, however, the more successful of them have begun to struggle with the pressure of building individual versions of every section of every course. Several—like CCCOnline and the RODP—have abandoned the every-faculty-member-for-himself approach in favor of designing courses centrally, which then get taught by multiple instructors. The prebuilt course becomes the core for all sections, with some faculty customization of individual sections.Designing online courses via the build-it-once, use-it-often approach dramatically reduces the costs of development for online instruction, especially when the instructors are adjunct faculty.
The issue for states is no longer how to engage institutions in online learning in general; there are sufficient critical mass and acceptance throughout higher education for that to remain the goal. The issue now is how to provide incentives so that individual institutions will respond to specific state needs. Institutions may choose to collaborate or not in responding to such incentives, but the burden of decision, action, and return on investment is with the institutions. Institutions can be very nimble and creative when incentives and the will to engage in learning innovations exist. The key is to provide a competitive funding mechanism driven by consumer needs data, stressing collaborative effort only when appropriate.
As long as faculty members are expected to respond to every student question or interact directly with each individual student in all aspects of a course, it will never be possible to accommodate enrollment growth and provide a high-quality learning experience for students. Strategies that direct course activities to and receive responses from groups of students provide a way out of that problem. |
