EDUCATION FOR EVERY ONE

EDUCATION, COMMERCE, AND COMMUNICATIONS:

THE ERA OF COMPETITION

Murray Turoff

Distinguished Professor of Computer and Information Science

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Newark, NJ 07102

Email: turoff@vc.njit.edu

Homepage: http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/

Copyright 1998. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Distributed via the Web by permission of AACE

Abstract: Consequences of the coming world wide competition in courses, degree programs, and training and what it may mean for higher education in the future are discussed. Traditionally, institutions of higher education had some security in what amounted to geographical monopolies corresponding to the physical campus location. The consumer is now becoming free from that constraint. This will probably mean the emergence of virtual organizations and serious survival concerns for those institutions and associated faculty that cannot adapt or compete in the new environment.
Where is the wisdom we lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we lost in information?
T. S. Eliot (The Rock)INTRODUCTION
A decade ago the practice of remote education was largely limited to inexpensive asynchronous correspondence type courses using surface mail, or very expensive video broadcast systems with audio feedback. Typically remote education embodied a very narrow concept of communications between a single instructor and a single student (correspondence model) or the broadcast of material to a largely passive large audience (broadcast model). The latter was claimed to be an attempt to replicate the atmosphere of the face to face class. Both forms proved to be a sad second in quality and performance relative to the small interactive face to face class. Today, many people still consider remote education a poor second (thought necessary for some) to on campus education because of those earlier experiences.
Those of us who have worked with remote delivery of courses, using group communications and the Web, have found that remote students can do at least as well as on campus students, and in some cases better [Hiltz 1994]. Even campus based face to face classes can be a lot better when they utilize appropriate group communications technology [Turoff & Hiltz 1995]. There is enough evidence from experiments and field trials to consider the above a scientific finding [Hiltz & Wellman 1997]. In my own case, distance students are part of the same asynchronous on line conference that includes my face to face students. The only difference between the two is that remote students get video tapes of my lectures. When we first started to employ group communications in the early eighties, we were using computer conferencing for face to face to face classes, NOT distance learning [Hiltz and Turoff 1993]. While we believed it made a major improvement to regular courses, it was only distance learning that held the interest of those who had money to sponsor studies of the use of the technology in the educational process.
What is important to realize is that it is not only technology that is important but the learning methodologies utilized to employ the technology. Asynchronous group communication allows the use of collaborative modes of education where students may work on team oriented assignments. They may communicate and work together as small project teams. It is this key difference that makes most of the quality improvements possible. Furthermore, students can see the quality of each other’s work and this seems to be significantly more motivation for good work than when just the instructor sees the students work. These impacts occur for regular students as well as distance students [Turoff 1995].
The paradox of automation is that when one takes what is done manually and uses computers to imitate the same process, the loss is the opportunity to carry out the objective in new and innovative ways that can enhance the quality of what is done. This lesson keeps repeating it self in new application areas. Successful use of the technology involves Virtual Classes that are very different than the face to face class.
However, another truism in the field of information systems is that innovative use of the technology often gets derailed when it is implemented on a mass scale. We saw this in the early years of most IS innovations. What gets marketed to the masses was not always representative of the systems that demonstrated the innovation. For remote education this is even a more extreme a problem because there is a social revolution as well as a technology revolution taking place.
At the same time that the technology allows the offering of remote education it also completely eliminates the safe geographical monopolies that many institutions of higher education could count on as a core market to maintain their stability.
Any college or university can now offer their courses and degrees at a reasonable cost anywhere in the world.We have entered the era of world wide competition among institutions of higher education. (In the long run this will also apply to public and private education at all levels and various student services, such as tutoring.)

THE ERA OF COMPETITION
For a mere $15 million (less than the cost of a single college building) one could start a virtual university serving two to four thousand students where each instructor gets $150,000 a year to work with student classes in the 25 to 50 size range. Tuition at such an institution could range from $7,500 to $15,000 a year [Turoff 1995]. Even an existing university can do this if it can ignore the current sunk costs of maintaining its physical campus when doing remote education. Even if one does not agree with the academic design presented in this earlier paper, one has to realize that the analysis means that there is little economic barrier to any institution getting into the field or for new institutions to start up.
The growing cost of higher education tuition is creating an economic umbrella under which new institutions and new programs can prosper. The economics are even more dramatic if one goes to the correspondence course model:

• One academic doing the video tapes or on line multimedia course material with video clips, voice clips and CAI type aids that can "teach" (in broadcast mode) thousands of students.
• One teaching assistant or hired grader can grade problems and exams for 100 students at a cost of about $5,000-10,000, or an AI system that can do the grading when we restrict the questions to "well structured" ones.
• Communication limited largely to email between the individual grader and the student.

While I think many of us who are academics cringe at this model of education, I am afraid that pressures of cost reduction are forcing many administrators to take this model seriously. The students enrolled in the correspondence course form of learning may never know what they are missing. For those who are working part time or full time, have family or work commitments, this form of education is a Godsend. It allows them to choose when they will participate, eliminates travel time, allows them to use late night hours, solves course conflict problems and puts the scheduling of their time entirely under their control.
There is considerable effort underway to utilize group communications and collaborative learning methodologies (See: Society for Asynchronous Learning Networks http://www.aln.org). However, I suspect the vast majority of distance offerings by universities, colleges, and corporate training operations throughout the country is still following the "correspondence course" model with a focus on email and web delivery of multimedia material.
Even in the ALN community there is a lack of perception among many institutions as to what is really taking place. At many institutions of higher learning the distance education mission was, and still is, treated as a separate education entity and in some cases not under the direct control of faculty or departments. At NJIT, on the other hand, over half of the enrollments in distance education are from regular on campus students seeking to eliminate course scheduling conflicts and be able to complete their degrees earlier [Turoff 1997].
The normative goal of the use of the Web and group communications for educational delivery should be to completely eliminate the need for any distinction, organizationally or functionally, between distance students and on campus students.If the same technology is applied for all courses, then the individual students may choose whether to attend lectures, view video material, and/or utilize web multimedia material. There is then no need to distinguish in any way shape or form between distance students and face to face students. Many students who attend my face to face classes go to the library to view videos when they have to travel or when they feel the need to review lectures before an exam. Many foreign students with language difficulties want to be able to hear some lectures more than once.
We can contrast this view with what a number of current programs are engaging in which is "skimming the cream." Duke University, for example, has introduced a remotely offered MBA. The on campus students normally pay tuition in the range of $40,000, but the distance student will pay over $80,000 for the same degree program. In the past the most lucrative distance programs were those where industry picked up the costs for the student and targeting industry sponsors is one of the current marketing philosophies in use.
One view of the marketplace by some educators is the largely industry market providing "just-in-time," on demand approach to electronic educational products offered by virtual universities through intermediaries called "educational brokers" [Hamalainen et al. 1996]. The concept of "just in time education" points to the lack of understanding among many educators as to the necessity to understand first what market higher education serves. Traditionally, we have been there to serve the students by providing a degree program that will allow them to change their lives and their jobs. Industry on the other hand wants education that is just enough to improve their performance on current jobs and is not interested in losing their employees. For example, many companies supporting tuition do so on a course by course basis and will not support courses not considered relevant to the current job of an employee. Subjects such as philosophy is not often considered job related! Yet I would claim that those students with a strong background in philosophy make better information system designers. When one gets into discussions with some industry representatives it is clear, for example, they want things like specific language courses and not general language theory courses that will allow students to pick up most new languages on their own.
It is not clear that serving what industry wants is always consistent with the goal of an institution of higher education to serve the student. Who is the customer is a fundamental question!Unfortunately students sometimes do not appreciate the value of some the things you try to teach them until long after they have completed their education. On the other hand, I have found by mixing my face to face students with the remote students that often the remote students who have been out in industry for many years are a considerable aid in letting the other students know the value of some of what they are learning.

BROKERS & MARKETEERS
Another aspect of the emerging marketplace is the "brokers" who can translate into an additional bureaucratic layer between the student and the educational process. If the prospective student were an intelligent consumer with all the necessary information to make a wise market choice, brokers would be unnecessary. Sooner or later the students and companies will learn that most of these have specific products they are marketing and they don’t really serve as an unbiased broker. A counter trend is the growing number of publications reviewing and rating colleges and attempting to provide consumer information. Every year they seem to be getting a little better at this but nowhere near what is needed. The education decision for the consumer is a decision equivalent in cost to buying a new car every year. We can expect to see a "consumer report" organization on higher education that might also become the "amazon" of course providers. It would charge the consumer directly for finding the right match of a degree program or combination of courses. Such an organization would not work for any regional or other set of universities or providers.
The power of intelligent consumer feedback on courses, degree programs, and institutions, gathered on the web and provided for the consumer, will be a major factor in the evolution of a truly free enterprise marketplace in learning [Turoff 1985, 1995]. Just as Amazon.com is doing with books, some future retailer will market consumer evaluated educational and learning options.

ACCREDITATION
This brings us to another key element in the puzzle of trying to understand the future of this area: accreditation. Right now only degree programs are accredited. Consumers at the undergraduate level seem to have little understanding today of what accreditation actually is. To some extent remote programs have been ignored or only superficially examined by most accreditation reviews. As a result a lot of remote courses can be taught by adjuncts, sometimes a much higher portion than would be acceptable for the normal program. However, one gets the impression that accreditation organizations and associated professional societies are waking up to the need to look more carefully at these programs. There are a number of significant changes that the consumer is going come to understand and want.
A student taking courses from separate educational institutions, which are still part of the same accredited degree program at the different institutions, should have no problem in knowing the course will count for that degree regardless of the institution it was taken at.This is the sort of policy a single educational institution can adopt and as a result we expect to see such policies become commonplace. As an expected long term consequence, students will be able to sample institutions without penalty or find their way around the problems of closed out courses at their own institution. Our own studies have shown part time working students in Computer Science at NJIT can take a decade or more to get a degree. With the addition of remote courses they can often cut three or more years off this time frame [Turoff 1998]. The sequence of prerequisites in many technical fields means that the loss of the opportunity to take a course in a given semester has more than a linear impact on the time required to complete the program.
Another and even more desirable change would be the accreditation of faculty on an individual basis that would go with the faculty member if he or she changed institutions. I won’t hold my breath for the latter but the former will come ultimately as a result of consumer pressure.
With universities, colleges, commercial companies and various consortiums (around the world) all putting courses on the Web, this area is going to suffer the problem that from a quality standpoint a significant number of offerings are going to be almost fraudulent in terms of the quality of offering. There are already a number of diploma mills on the Web that are milking consumers and which undermine the integrity of higher education in the consumers’ eyes. The accreditation agencies, in the long run, are there to serve the consumers, or should be. Unless they wake up to their responsibilities in this area the result could be that higher education will lose further respect and support of the political body. The public role of accreditation agencies can be replaced by further "magazine surveys" and new organizations serving the consumer. Accreditation groups should form a consortium to provide the consumer an international clearing house of detailed accreditation information available through the Web.
There are already US, English, Australian, and other European institutions marketing courses on an international basis. Given the large numbers of students not able to afford to go to another country, we can expect a significant rise in remote international students.

TWO APPROACHES
One way of trying to understand the future is extrapolating current trends to their extreme and developing two contrasting scenarios to represent the future of distance education. This is quite easy to do in this case by merely contrasting choices based upon minimizing costs verses maximizing quality.

Characteristic	Maximum Efficiency	Maximum Effectiveness
Learning methodology	individual study and practice	collaborative learning oriented small groups
Instructors role	creator/presenter of "canned" reusable material (instructor may be virtual)	facilitator of groups exploring knowledge and a consultant on reaching understandings
Class sizes	thousands	ten to one hundred (with appropriate software)
Staff	graders and/or problem consultants.	Little or none, small group interactions
Objective	acquiring skills (e.g. how to do a derivative) and training	acquiring cognitive processes (application domain oriented problem solving), e.g. being able to conceptualize a derivative appropriate to investigating a physical problem
Similar current models	large mass lecture classes, TA problem solving groups	small graduate seminars
Social Outcomes	small number of totally virtual universities buying and reselling courses as needed	able to run courses appealing to only very limited numbers but having world wide student access
Control	largely organizational and market driven	faculty driven
Technology	Email, multimedia WEB documents, CAI software	group communications, collaborative Hypermedia knowledge bases and animation type recordings of thought processes.

As one reflects about the above breakdown it should be obvious that there is nothing wrong with having inexpensive ways to deliver skill training. However, for a good university the amount of skills taught as a part of any course should largely occur in the lower division years. What faculty really should be teaching students is how to do problem solving in their subject domain. To do this successfully requires a high degree of communication between the faculty and students so one can perceive if the learning process is successful and adjust it accordingly. To become an expert or "master" in a given field the student and the class need the intelligent guidance and insight that only an accomplished professional can provide.

SUPPORTING FUNCTIONALITY
There is a lot to be said for the old fashioned blackboard in that it allowed the instructor to illustrate a problem solving thought process by the animation of that process. As yet none of the easy to use word processors allow an instructor to create even the simple animation of the derivation of a formula or concept. One does not learn how to paint by looking at a finished paining; one has to view the creation of the painting.
In our Virtual ClassroomÔ software we have the simple facility that if the instructor posses a class discussion question, no student can see the answers until they have supplied their answer. This simple control on the group communication processes makes the concept of the discussion question a better educational method when done through the computer rather than face to face [Turoff & Hiltz 1995a]. Probably a majority of faculty today considers that education over the Web will always be a poor second to the physical classroom approach. Such a person asked to teach with the Web will probably carry out a self full filling prophecy. One should be willing to face the challenge of making it better experience. It is our belief that the Virtual Classroom type of technology employed with collaborative learning methodology can be a more effective educational environment than the physical classroom.

One basic limitation on the current generation of commercial group communication system is