The University of Arizona
Southwest Project
A Study of Shifting Learning Roles
Assuring High Quality Online Education:
A Statement of Our Intention
February 1998
Research universities (especially publicly funded universities) control certain kinds of resources that must be deployed for general public benefit. These include rich stores of scientific data, research support infrastructure, and membership in topically and geographically diffuse research communities.
Exploiting these resources to provide unique educational opportunities is central to becoming a student-centered research university. It is not enough for students to be taught by world class researchers. They should also learn with world class data, in learning processes that are active, interactive, collaborative, and self-directed. Amid broad changes in higher education and in society, the future role of the comprehensive research university depends on how we address the challenge of reforming teaching and learning.
Increasingly, students seeking college courses can find them online from their own desktops. Any institution might develop online technology simply to remain competitive, for the expansion of choice this creates is nothing short of staggering. But more staggering still is the impact of these expanded opportunities on the general practice of teaching and learning. Online technology does not merely provide access to learning at a distance but enables overall redesign of learning. It allows us to extend the reach and multiply the value of our intellectual resources. And it is this latter point--a matter of good stewardship--that motivates our interest in online technology.
On campus, consensus has been growing around the conviction that we need to develop the positive potential of new information technology for public education and to assure that online education is quality education. We are prepared to make a formal statement of intention and to urge its adoption as an expression of institutional intent:
Our intention is to develop online technology for high quality education and for continuous improvement of online educational opportunities.
UA is already aggressively pursuing quality in online instruction through development of materials and invention of tools needed to make web-based instruction rich in both content and form. This is a monumental task, one that is being shared by the nation's research universities through such organizations as the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative. In stating this intention, we are not simply urging the incorporation of more technology into teaching but committing ourselves to deployment of the rich resources of the research environment to generate benefit for the institution, the profession, and the broader communities that rely on us for creation of new knowledge.
Several UA initiatives exemplify this commitment. The library has invested heavily in methods for creation, cataloguing, and accessing data in new media (for example, digitized images). The "generic instructional toolkit" initiative has led to the acquisition of a web-based conferencing tool (Caucus), the creation of a unique web course construction kit emphasizing learning dialogues (POLIS), and the emergence of a comprehensive assessment and course management tool (WILBUR). The Southwest Project, a cross-disciplinary group of faculty and staff, is working on technology, including meta-data standards, to allow us to repackage research data for teaching and outreach. The recently formed Divsion of Learning, Technology, and Assessment, a division of the Arizona Research Laboratories, will focus on uses of technology to adapt instruction to characteristics and needs of the learner. And each of these initiatives interacts with a growing network of external partnerships with K-12 schools, community colleges, and other public institutions.
Proposed Institutional Response
Our formal statement of intent is backed by the efforts of many faculty and staff across campus who have contributed to the development of online technology for high quality education and for continuous improvement of online educational opportunities. We have already made substantial investment in carrying out this intention and are prepared to do a great deal more.
We believe that the entire university should join in this intention and should make definite commitments to the following particulars:
1. An intention to support distributed learning. Support for distributed learning has been formally voiced not only by learning with technology initiatives like the Southwest Project, the Generic Instructional Toolkit initiative, and the Center for Collaborative Research on Learning Technology, but also by quasi-administrative groups like the Information Technology Council. This broad support for distributed learning is grounded in the belief that in developing tools and content for online instruction, we will discover ways of improving all instruction. Administratively, support for distributed learning is authority to change the taken-for-granted practice of teaching and learning, as for example by revising our ideas about what counts as a class and about how to measure faculty workload.
2. An intention to provide a better academic computing environment. The goal is universal access to critical technology, especially the web. Instructors need desktop support for using technology in their teaching. Students need web access through open access computer labs and through dialup connections. A major investment in equipment and infrastructure will be required for this, but it is essential to our ability to deliver on our research, teaching, and service missions. The intention to provide universal access to online technology comes first, after which it is possible to consider many ways of carrying out this intention.
3. An intention to coordinate and fund both internal development and external partnerships centrally. Many projects are underway to develop or deploy instructional technology on campus. Each project has developed independently, working out leadership, partnerships, and funding arrangements on its own. Centralized leadership and funding of our major development initiatives is needed. Additionally, authority to build external partnerships with other universities and with for-profit organizations needs to be assigned to one or more individuals connected with instructional technology.
Conclusion
Our data, our tools, and our research culture are the materials from which we hope to fashion new ways to teach and learn. Going online is the means, not the end. Online technology provides access to content that resides uniquely in the nation's research universities. The tools and techniques we invent and share with other institutions are means by which we expand our capacity for contribution to public education beyond the students we serve directly. Research on new technology and its impact on outcomes generates new knowledge about how students learn, knowledge that gets rolled back into further improvements in the design of online instruction. Investing in learning technology is investing in learning.