Distance education in an era of eLearning: challenges and opportunities for a campus‐focused institution

Abstract

The growth of eLearning technologies has blurred the boundaries of educational modes to a point where distance education programs can be offered without drawing particular notice on campus. The experience of distance education staff working in campus‐focused universities and their perceptions of their chances of successfully planning and teaching by distance should inform evaluation of a university’s quality framework. In this case study, we report on the experience of distance educators at an Australian campus‐focused university. We identify organisational structure and culture as critical success factors for quality in distance education, with technology a, perhaps surprisingly, minor consideration. While the eLearning era has opened the door to a distance education cottage industry, eLearning strategy has failed to comprehensively prepare the way for the issues unique to distance education. The paper recommends that campus‐focused universities must protect their reputation by systematically assuring the quality of their (inevitable) distance offerings.

Keywords:

• academic and non‐academic teamwork
• flexibility
• fully online education
• quality assurance
• strategic planning

Acknowledgements

Research towards this paper was conducted while the authors were employed or contracted to the Faculties of Health Sciences and Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney.

Notes

1. In Australia and elsewhere this understanding of the traditional perspective on the professoriate emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a sort of enacted debate, consisting of student protest and moves by junior academic staff to change the higher education system and take new approaches to university‐level education (Beazley, 1972). This required a shift towards expanded participation in university governance and student‐centred pedagogies and included development of open universities using technologies to facilitate distance education (Beazley, 1972; Boud, 2006).

2. The word program is used somewhat tentatively here, as it is difficult to define an equivalent unit of analysis. Most of these programs are individual award courses leading to a university degree or diploma, but some are not. It was nevertheless felt that program was a better unit of analysis than unit of study, as it is at the program level that most challenges and success factors are experienced and it was also clear that the highly variable number of units of study in different programs would skew our results. The authors would like to apologise in advance for any programs that were missed. Furthermore, University administrative databases retain a complex categorisation of ‘external’ and ‘multi‐modal’ units of study – reflecting, perhaps, a general increasing complexity in modes of participation in Higher Education (Schütze & Slowey, 2002). Locating distance education programs within this complex reporting structure in a non‐distance education institution presented a challenge in the first instance. In the end, most distance education programs were located via networks of University colleagues who had worked with or knew of such programs. This means that our list of programs are also those that self‐identify as distance.

3. Postgraduate coursework programs are (in alphabetical order) Animal Breeding Management; Applied Vision Sciences; Biostatistics; Clinical Epidemiology; Developmental Disability; Health Information Systems; Health Science Education; Indigenous Community Health; International Education; Learning Science & Technology; Medical Education; Medical Radiation Science; Medicine; Mental Health; Ophthalmic Science; Pain Management; Project Management; Public Health; Sexual Health; Veterinary Public Health; Veterinary Public Health Management; and Veterinary Studies. Distance continuing education units are in place in Medicine and Veterinary Science (Post Graduate Foundation). Doctoral program is in Health Sciences. Arts units of study are in Archaeology, History and Linguistics, among others.

4. This includes one program in Social Work (Mental Health) and three programs in Veterinary Science (Veterinary Public Health, Veterinary Public Health Management and Veterinary Studies) meaning that, while 81% are in health‐related fields, 64% of distance education postgraduate coursework programs are offered in the Health and Medical Faculties.