Page 245 - Crisis in Higher Education

216 • Crisis in Higher Education

private, not-for-profit institutions to develop strategies and plans that
include well-constructed online offerings. These efforts must include the
following:

1. High quality: The most important element is ensuring that online
programs and individual courses have the same high quality as
their face-to-face counterparts. Universities have standing and these
offering must maintain, even enhance, their reputations. On-line
offerings must be designed so students can interact with faculty and
other students to create networking opportunities and mechanisms
to exchange ideas and create study groups.
2. Invest in technology and program content: It is not enough to use
electronic copies of existing books, put power point slides online,
and use video capture to allow students to view previous lectures.
Quality depends on universities investing in the technology to
deliver online content reliably and quickly, but more importantly,
investing in high-quality productions that deliver outstanding con-
tent. This means working with publisher to create good e-learning
tools and with firms that can provide high-quality instructional
videos. This new approach is very different from the way courses
are currently developed where individual faculty is responsible for
designing and preparing a course. The new approach requires a sub-
stantial investment in course development, which universities have
not done and do not seem to understand.
3. Security: There must be effective ways to ensure that the person
who enrolls in the course is actually doing the work. When stu-
dents live close, it is possible to have them come to campus for
exams. If they live too far from campus or live close by but are
unable to come to campus, there must be a way to verify who is
taking the exam. It is possible to use libraries or other entities that
are close to the students, so their identification can be checked.
This can be a logistics nightmare when all or most students in
a large class need this service. It is even more challenging when
students are outside of the United States. Therefore, having a
sophisticated electronic identification method to ensure security
is essential.
4. Getting started: It makes sense to begin the process with high-
enrollment courses, where it is possible to enjoy the economies of