intro body

Australia

Deakin University

Prepared by:

Jocelyn Calvert

Brief description of the programme

Located in the State of Victoria, Australia, Deakin University is a multi-campus institution with a major commitment to flexible learning delivered through the use of educational and communications technologies. Headquartered in Geelong, the university operates three campuses in Melbourne, two in Geelong, and one in Warrnambool.

Deakin enrolled 30,191 students in its regular programmes in 1996. A further 30,000 students were enrolled through its commercial arm, Deakin Australia, for a total in excess of 60,000 students. Of the regular students, 13,088 or 43 percent were enrolled off-campus. All Deakin Australia students were off-campus students, making Deakin, with a total of more than 43,000 off-campus students, the largest university off-campus provider in Australia.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      The major planning and management issue facing the university over the past six years has been how to integrate the academic programmes and approaches to teaching and learning of the three formerly independent degree granting institutions that merged in the period 1990 to 1992 to form the present Deakin University. Two of these institutions had major pre-merger distance education programmes.

Implementing quality assurance

      The university is committed to the principles of quality management and continuous improvement. Implementing these principles involves both the regular evaluation of teaching materials and the assessment of teaching of academic staff, both of which involve seeking student reactions to their course experience. It has proved difficult to distinguish between student reactions to learning materials and to the performance of teaching staff. The distinction is important because the corrective actions that are needed are very different in each case.

Using and integrating media in distance learning

      The development of the World Wide Web allows Deakin to deliver off-campus programmes in new ways. Used well, the Web provides an easy-to-use, cost-effective, flexible, and powerful medium for the delivery of higher education. Its ease of use, however, presents the university with a serious issue. Academic staff can quickly learn to ‘mount’ Web courses. They are not always, however, well equipped to take best educational advantage of what the Web offers. The issue facing the university is how, on the one hand, to ensure that all Deakin-based Web offerings reflect university standards and policies, while, on the other hand, allowing academic staff to creatively explore the Web for educational purposes.

      Similarly, a broader issue facing the university is how to develop the skills of teaching staff so that they are able to make the best educational use of new educational media. The increasing reliance of the university on resource-based learning methods has fundamentally changed the nature of academic work in the university with considerable implications for the nature of professional development activities.

Instructional design and production for distance learning

A major issue facing the university is how to cost-effectively maintain an up-to-date archive of all its course materials. Over the last two years, staff have been involved in the development of an ‘electronic warehouse’ of materials. The concept is that all materials will be stored digitally, allowing for both easy revision and reproduction in whichever medium is required.

Another important issue is how to allocate scarce educational development resources for maximum benefit. Should the university allocate significant resources to ‘lighthouse’ projects designed to illuminate and illustrate the art of the possible? Or would it be better to allocate resources more widely to projects that make use of mainstream approaches? This issue is unresolved.

Learner support systems

An important challenge is how to foster the effective use of electronic media for teaching and learning. Many staff and students are new to the educational use of e-mail, bulletin boards, and computer conferencing. Their effective use requires the development of new skills and a willingness, in the case of students, to participate.

Part of the process of higher education is the integration of students into a broader, often discipline-based, academic community of students and scholars. The development of such a community is problematic in distance education programmes such as those at Deakin University, which often do not require students to engage in on-campus or face-to-face activities. Deakin’s response has been to use communication technologies to create electronic communities. The members of this community — academic staff, students, academic support staff, and administrative staff — are linked through an integrated, interactive, electronic communication environment known as the Deakin Interchange. The Interchange provides users with access to e-mail, computer conferencing, library and administrative databases and services, and Web services through the use of a consistent, menu-driven, ‘point and click’ user interface. Creating a reliable system that is easy to install, use, and upgrade has been a difficult task. The Interchange, however, as its technological manifestations evolve, will increasingly become the mechanism for the creation of virtual communities of the sort that develop spontaneously in campus settings.

The most important issue: Planning and managing a multi-campus, flexible mode university

At the beginning of 1992, Deakin University, with campuses in the regional communities of Geelong and Warrnambool, merged with three campuses of Victoria College in metropolitan Melbourne. Deakin had a strong tradition of distance education while Victoria College was almost exclusively campus-based. The challenge was to bring together the distinct cultures of the two institutions to create a new Deakin University with a common vision that would be in a position to operate effectively in the new national and international environment of higher education. From the distance education perspective, it was important that, at Geelong and Warrnambool, distance education and on-campus education were integrated in a dual mode model, with more than half the students and 38 percent of equivalent full-time load studying at a distance.

The new university determined early that distance education was one of its strengths and should be spread across its campuses. Several strategic decisions were critical to developments: structural integration; course rationalisation; resource-based learning and technology integration; and industry-based and professional programmes.

Structural integration

Deakin University did not adopt a federated model in which the regional and metropolitan campuses would operate with some degree of independence and duplicated services; instead, it opted for full structural integration. In academic terms, seventeen faculties were reduced to five, each with from two to five schools (or departments). While a small number of schools are based predominantly on one campus, the majority of schools and all faculties have staff spread across different campuses. This means that academic decisions pertaining to distance education, at the faculty and school level and in terms of university policy, engage the entire university rather than a traditional interest group. Administrative and academic service divisions of the university are similarly integrated. In some cases, a particular type of operation is based on one campus; for example, the off-campus library service operates from one of the Geelong campuses but draws on the resources of all campus libraries. In other cases, services of a division or branch are available on a number of campuses; for example, Learning Resources Services, which is responsible for the physical development and production of learning materials, has distributed staff and facilities.

Course rationalisation

Flexible learning options for students required an integrated curriculum with common cross-campus courses (programmes of study) and course units. Academic staff in a particular field or discipline, who may have been based on a number of different campuses, were required to review areas of overlap and develop single course structures; for example, several Bachelor of Business and Bachelor of Commerce degree courses became one Bachelor of Commerce taught on three campuses and off-campus. In fields that typically have fewer required units and more options (for example, history) academic staff were encouraged to review the units of the predecessor institutions and create a coherent selection that would be offered across the university.

Resource-based learning and technology integration

Flexible learning, including cross-campus delivery as well as distance education, could best be served by the development of learning resources for use by all students. This approach had its origins in the Deakin University of the late 1970s when the open campus, with on-campus students using off-campus materials, was conceived as transforming teaching and learning for all students and academic staff. Following the mergers, the university’s distance education infrastructure, including educational developers and Learning Resources Services, were deployed in developments and redevelopments across the university. At the same time, the university set a policy of technology integration with particular emphasis on information technology and computer communication. In 1995, Deakin was named Australian University of the Year on the basis of its integration of technology into teaching and learning.

Industry-based and professional programmes

Both predecessor institutions had innovative programmes for students outside the regular government funding structures. Victoria College’s Technology Management Programme saw students in major industries use laptop computers to access technical (Technical And Further Education) and university courses year round in a self-paced system. Deakin Geelong’s Centre for Management Services provided development and delivery services for professional associations on a contract basis, enabling the associations to offer continuing education at a distance. These activities were merged in Deakin Australia, which continues a successful record of providing distance education services to the professions and industry. Some programmes offered through Deakin Australia are accredited by the university. In one case of co-operation, Deakin University and the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists, and Managers of Australia offer a joint mba degree in Australia and internationally using Deakin Australia facilities and services.

Summary

The result is a new type of university that is unrecognisable in the terms of its predecessor institutions. The transformation, of course, is not complete, and never will be in this environment of continuous change in higher education. We believe that Deakin University is in a better position than it would have been without such radical restructuring. In our view, essential ingredients for success in such an endeavour are:

      strong leadership, including appropriate rhetoric about the mission of the university;

      a programme of change management that allows all parts of the institution to understand and accept their new roles; and

      serious commitment to professional development to address the changing nature of academic and administrative work.

External studies at Murdoch University

Prepared by:

Patrick Guiton

Brief description of the programme

Murdoch is a dual mode university where external study is a viable alternative mode of study that is available to all students rather than a substitute mode of study to accommodate the disadvantaged needs of those who cannot get the ‘real thing’. Because more than 70 percent of the university’s credit offerings are available for study either on- or off-campus, students exercise their choice of mode on a unit-by-unit basis and many study concurrently in both modes.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      Maintaining university commitment to a Centre for Off-campus (External) Studies in the face of policies favouring devolution of managerial and financial responsibility to individual schools of study.

       Allocating systematic workload release time for academic staff engaged in the development of a second (distance education) mode of learning resource materials.

Implementing quality assurance

      Involving academic staff in dual mode teaching to adopt the view that assuring a common curriculum regardless of study mode demands flexibility not identity in delivery method or style.

      Establishing a consistent house style across a large range (250 units per annum) of courses despite a relatively small enrolment (average 30 units).

      Gaining acceptance by staff of quality assurance as a standard course design improvement procedure not as a punitive measure.

Using and integrating media in distance education

      Deciding the point at which it may be assumed that a technological innovation (audio or video cassette; personal computer; and e-mail) has become sufficiently widely diffused to justify its use as a compulsory component of course materials.

      Getting to the point at which academic staff involved in dual mode teaching recognise the value to themselves of modifying their face-to-face teaching by integrating the use of guided independent learning resources into the classroom mode.

      Addressing staff development needs associated with integrating new communication technologies into course design.

Instructional design and production

      Justifying the annual update and production of print and audio resource materials for all courses as a means of ensuring parity of curriculum content both ‘on-campus’ and ‘off-campus’.

      Maintaining a course development and production pattern spread throughout the calendar year rather than bunched around the peaks and troughs of the standard academic calendar.

      Developing and disseminating new instructional design techniques for on-line publication.

Learner support systems

      Gresham’s Law of Organisational Life — ‘Work drives out avoidable work regardless of its relative importance’ — translated to the dual mode context, means getting academic staff to give equal attention to the external student’s mailed assignment or telephone call as to the internal student’s knock on the door.

      Providing realistic and consistent support for isolated students in a geographic context that regularly places a student 200 kilometres from the next student and up to 1,000 kilometres from another enrolment in the same unit of study.

The most important issue: Maintaining university commitment

In calling these issues ‘challenges’ rather than ‘problems’, I suggest that all except maintaining university commitment are, in fact, challenges that anyone setting up and running a Centre for Distance Education in a dual mode university will have to deal with if the enterprise is to succeed. Maintaining university commitment is of a different order in that it reflects the influence of broad economic rationalist thinking from beyond the arena of academic policy and university politics. For that reason, it must be the most important issue.

In dealing with all the other challenges, we argue for acceptance of the distance mode as a viable alternative and equivalent mode not as a poor substitute: in short, we claim it as part of the mainstream of university life. When times get tough and resources get short, those whom we have spent our time convincing are tempted to ‘hoist us with our own petard’. If distance education is a mainstream function, it is argued, then why does the university need to spend significant resources maintaining a specialist organisational centre to handle the distance mode and the needs of its students separate from the mainstream university structures provided by the schools and the registry?

In these hard economic times, a highly professional centre for external or off-campus studies in the dual mode system can all too easily become a victim of its own success. But it is evident enough that success in coping with all the other challenges has always depended on the vigilance, persistence, and single-mindedness of professional distance educators working from a visible and well-recognised centre. So a challenge translates into a problem.

Open Access College

Prepared by:

Marg Beagley

Brief description of the programme

The Open Access College (oac) opened in January 1991, replacing the former South Australian Correspondence School. The college’s vision is to ‘recognise, value, and celebrate its uniqueness and the diversity of its people. It is an organisation whose business is teaching and learning … and as its very title suggests, all of its operations will be founded on the core values of access and openness’.

The teaching and learning programme involves interaction with students using a range of technologies, including high-frequency radio, telephone, facsimile, and electronic classroom techniques, as well as through a visiting programme, mini-schools, camps, and school experience weeks.

The college has the responsibility of redressing the educational disadvantage for children which arises from remoteness and isolation. It provides opportunities for students in metropolitan, rural, and remote areas of South Australia to gain access to a broader curriculum.

What is the Open Access College?

The establishment of the Open Access College was a key strategy in the management and co-ordination of the increased demand for distance education in South Australia. The college is a multi-campus organisation consisting of:

       Three Schools of Distance Education

-      reception to year 10 (Marden site, metropolitan Adelaide),

-      senior secondary (Marden), and

-      reception to year 12 (Port Augusta site, 300 kilometres by road from the Marden site);

       Open Access Materials Unit

-      responsible for refinement, development, and production of open access course materials; and

        Outreach Education Services

-      providing educational support for a range of cultural and scientific institutions, for example, the State Zoo, Museum, Botanical Gardens.

Student profile

Students for whom services are provided by the schools of distance education come from the following groups:

      students in government schools and non-government schools;

      remote and isolated students, including some South Australians who are resident or travelling interstate or overseas;

      post-secondary age students, including prisoners, adult re-entry students, and students in full-time vocational courses; and

      special needs students, including medical-based and student behaviour management enrolments.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

      Although close liaison between course developers and teachers is needed, it is at times difficult due to different tenure of employment.

      Teaching through course packages is supplemented by telephone, radio lessons, or both; teleconferencing; and visits.

      The range of clients at any given year level is very wide, with a high turnover of students, particularly in the reception to year 10 levels. Continuity and short-term enrolments can present difficulties in the management of learning activities.

Implementing quality assurance

      Quality checks are built in at the course development level — writers are selected on merit; reference groups provide feedback at all stages of course development.

      Feedback and liaison between teachers and course developers are vital parts of the writing process.

      Quality checks are built into the materials production process.

Using and integrating media in distance education

     The use of media varies widely — audio and video are considered integral components of course development.

      The use of other media is optional where possible — videoconferencing, teleconferencing, facsimile, Electronic Classroomä, as facilities for students permit.

      Internet resources are being developed as an option for those students with access.

Instructional design and production for distance education

      Principles for course development include teaching and learning methodologies, course structure, and presentation elements.

      Course structure, design, and layout are based on 12 learning principles developed by the Open Access College.

      Course materials are developed on-site at the Open Access College in the Materials Unit; artists, keyboarders, electronic media studio, printing, and distribution facilities are utilised.

Learner support system

      Learners are provided with high-quality course materials for distance education, supported by teacher contact, and electronic learning strategies. Itinerant teachers visit primary students in remote areas.

      Counselling and resource centre services are available from the Marden site to support students in enrolment, personal concerns, and future option decisions.

      Supervisors work with school- and home-based students, particularly primary students and those in remote areas.

The most important issue: Using and integrating media in distance education

While the print medium is central to the delivery of courses through distance education from reception to year 12 levels, the use of other media is rapidly becoming an integrated part of all course development. It is expected that aural and visual media will be used in all courses so that different styles of learning can be addressed.

      Students are provided with audio and video cassettes to provide stimuli for the work that they do alone or with the assistance of a supervisor.

      Teachers and students have print material from which to work, and this is augmented by aural and oral contact with the teacher through high-frequency radio, telephone links, or both, varying from daily to weekly lessons.

      The most basic form of electronic media is the teleconference in which several students may be linked with the teacher by telephone for their weekly lesson. Interaction between students and teacher is possible, although clearly the group dynamic takes time to establish using this type of communication.

      Where students have access, videoconferencing is possible giving the visual as well as the audio contact; it is generally not available as a multi-point medium but enables closer contact between teacher and student.

      The Electronic Classroomä allows interactive learning to occur through the use of electronic whiteboard, video, and audio. Using this medium, the teacher and the student are able to exchange work and produce diagrams, maps, and written work in much the same way as they would face to face.

Depending on the availability of student access, each of these electronic media are used daily by teachers in their delivery of lessons to isolated students.

Current developments include the use of the Internet to provide stimulus not previously possible through distance education. The Open Access College has allocated considerable time and resources to the development of its Web site and specific subject pages, enabling course writers to provide Internet options for students who have access to this technology. The range of subjects utilising this medium at present includes the arts, legal studies, social studies, biology, environmental studies, geology, and home economics, as well as languages other than English.

In particular, the languages other than English (French, German, Indonesian, and Spanish) have used this medium to great advantage. Students can be given a selection of Web sites chosen for specific research, or the teacher is able to introduce new learning materials. For example, a student of Spanish is able to view an exhibition of etchings by Francisco Goya, produced co-operatively with the Art Gallery of South Australia. The student can also search for specific resources on aspects of culture — food, dance, and music — researched by the developer, and included in the subject page. The subject can incorporate a more holistic approach to learning for its student clients and allow them to access current, stimulating events to enhance their learning.

Information on each of the Outreach Education Services provided by the Open Access College as well as on cultural events and activities is also available through the home page.

The inclusion of the Internet resource must be an option at present as many students (particularly those in remote areas) do not have access to the Internet or even, in some case, to telephone communication. Nevertheless, it is a growing area, and one that is providing an exciting and stimulating aspect to distance education in South Australia.

Please visit our home page at http://www.saschools.edu.au/open_acc/open_acc.html

Open Learning Institute

Charles Sturt University

Prepared by:

David Meacham

Brief description of the programme

The Open Learning Institute (oli) of Charles Sturt University (csu), a multi-campus institution, is located in several cities in inland New South Wales in Eastern Australia.

Charles Sturt University offers a wide range of degree courses, both on-campus and through distance education, using print and electronic instructional media.

The Open Learning Institute is responsible for research and development, learning materials, design, production, student liaison, and academic staff development.

The university is expanding its proportion of off-campus students, with only about 13 percent being recruited directly from high school on the basis of their learning certificate results. An increasing number of overseas students study both at a distance and on-campus. Charles Sturt University is currently the largest single university provider of distance education in Australia and is seeking to expand its market by introducing both greater choice and greater flexibility of learning for its clients, many of whom are young professionals seeking to enhance their careers.

Problems encountered

In a time of rapid social and technological change coupled with government induced destabilisation of universities, many issues are emerging relating to the future role of distance education and its efficient operation in a client focused market, where needs may have to be met with diminishing resources.

Planning and managing distance education

      In a dual mode institution, structures and practices develop primarily to serve on-campus students who are now in the minority. This focus creates problems in introducing new systems for learners who require flexibility and asynchronous teaching. Currently the university is attempting to expand resource-based learning to allow greater flexibility in study time and location, which is problematic in a conventional two-semester system with fixed entry and exit times.

      Structures in the university are based on substantive areas of study, that is, schools, faculties, and centres, and functional divisions (for example, Information Technology and Financial Services). The Open Learning Institute exists to service a particular mode of learning that has become dominant. In addition, there has been considerable devolution of organisation and financial responsibility in an environment of diminishing resources. Consequently it is extremely difficult to develop a corporate or institutional approach to distance education when large numbers of factions with particular self-interests demand more from severely limited budgets.

      The volatile external political and economic environment makes forward planning difficult. Politically and economically it has become expedient to attempt to increase the level of student support for distance learners, while reducing expenditure. This situation has the potential to precipitate extreme management problems.

Implementing quality assurance

      The Open Learning Institute has begun a comprehensive quality assurance programme, starting with the development of a series of comprehensive procedure manuals. These manuals are proving difficult to update during a time of rapidly changing structures and priorities.

      In the university there is a large degree of scepticism about the effectiveness of industrially derived quality assurance schemes in higher education. In contrast, the political imperative is to develop sophisticated responses to government inspired quality audits that could significantly influence future funding.

Using and integrating media in open learning

      The university has enthusiastically embraced the use of non-print media in distance education. However, there is considerable increase in development costs in continuing to offer print materials with a multimedia alternative, or by using some multimedia to complement print.

      Important equity and marketing issues need to be addressed with regard to the use of integrated multimedia. The technology policy of the university will require new students to access specified personal computer hardware and software, eliminating some potential clients and attracting others, unless alternative provision exists for a while.

      The early stages of transfer to a predominantly electronic medium of distance education have led to some materials being made available that are little more than digital textbooks. More research needs to be done on the value added by various media and their suitability for specific applications.

Instructional design and production for distance education

      The integration of electronic media into distance education resources has required the recruitment of specialist instructional designers who have expertise in video, authorware, and Web design. General instructional designers, whose competence is mainly in the area of print, have become somewhat apprehensive as resources are moved to support emerging technologies.

Electronic media are being produced by individual teaching staff with limited input from educational designers, making quality control problematical. Print materials are rigorously checked before dispatch, after a comprehensive editorial process. New technologies are emerging at a rate that outstrips the development of systems to support and control their use.
Learner support systems

      The university has traditionally provided compulsory residential schools for many subjects, where group work and the use of specialised equipment were deemed to be necessary for appropriate understanding and competency development.

      Such provision is currently being challenged on the grounds that residential schools are costly, both for the university and for the student, who has to leave work and often travel long distances. Consequently, alternative, media-based means of support are being developed, sometimes against the views of the traditionalists, who regard face-to-face contact with students as a necessary ingredient for effective learning.

The most important issue: Finding alternatives to face-to-face contact

An important contemporary issue is the university’s lack of a structured, informed approach to the offering of residential schools.

The original intention was to require distance education students to attend campus for not more than two weeks per year to obtain intensive instruction, practice in areas in which human interaction or a specialist environment was a precondition for understanding and skill development, or both. Residential schools also provided an assurance to accrediting bodies, employers, and professional associations that distance education was not inferior to conventional teaching. The issue of parity of esteem between on- and off-campus courses was of paramount importance in the early days of distance education in Australia, but has diminished with widespread acceptance of the quality of distance education graduates.

Over the years, differences emerged between the two colleges that amalgamated to form the new university. Historical factors led to one campus offering course-based residential schools on a reduced scale, while another campus offered a greater level of subject-based residential schools. The original intent of residential schools appeared to be diluted, with idiosyncratic, campus-based views dominating. At the same time, emerging technologies capable of providing group interaction and simulations were not promoted and implemented on an institutional basis as an effective substitute for the on-campus instruction residential schools provided.

The Academic Senate of the university issued regulations concerning the conduct of residential schools which were often ignored or circumvented by the substitution of ‘optional’ residential schools operating under different or even no rules whatsoever.

Consequently, the Senate undertook to review its policy in this area, and adherence to it.

A working party investigated the issue and concluded that decisions about the offering of residential schools should be made on a transparent and rational basis, with such decisions being the responsibility of specific staff members. It also required monitoring and accountability systems to ensure conformance.

In addition, the Open Learning Institute seconded a staff member to research media-based alternatives to face-to-face teaching.

Thus the outcomes in the near future should be:

      the restoration of pedagogic considerations as the prime determinants of the existence of residential schools;

      an improved system of accountability; and

      research upon which to base decisions about appropriate modes of teaching.

It would be presumptuous to believe that procedural change and research will achieve all these improvements. Little has been done to address entrenched attitudes, which differ on the various campuses, and had their genesis in groups working in isolation from one another and in the corporate goals of the university. Scant attention may be given to regulations and recommended practice emanating from outside these groups. For success to be achieved, the benefits of both change and conformity must be clearly conveyed to the stakeholders, unless they are to revert to their comfort zone of familiar practice.

Summary

The following lessons can be learned from this study:

      Instructional design issues can only be resolved satisfactorily in an organisational context.

      The logic of pedagogy may conflict with the requirements of the market, the institution, and individual stockholders.

      Instructional design issues involve innovation and change; therefore, they require changed management components for successful implementation.

      Responses to external pressures on universities may lead to a diminution of the importance of pedagogical considerations.

      The structure and decision making processes of universities make innovation arising from outside the school structure and central administration problematic to deliver and monitor.

      The necessity for face-to-face contact to complement distance education in this context is poorly researched and lacks objective articulation.

      The mere availability of technology does little to ensure its institutionalisation.

      Institutionalisation of changes in teaching methodology is highly problematic in multi-campus institutions with highly devolved decision making and financial process.