College of Arts and Sciences
http://www.cwru.edu/univ-depts.html#artsci

Submitted by Associate Dean Sam Savin, sms7@po.cwru.edu member of the University Committee on Distance Learning,

The role of distance learning in the College of Arts and Sciences during the next decade will be primarily one of enhancing the educational experience of its traditional undergraduate and graduate students. In limited cases, primarily at the graduate level, new student markets may be reached through distance learning methods.

A steadily increasing number of instructors in the College use e-mail as a means of communicating with their students. The number of courses in which communication occurs outside of class via electronic bulletin boards or roundtables is also increasing. In addition to these, faculty within the College have instituted a variety of innovations into the curriculum to enhance traditional classroom education while freeing students and faculty from the constraints of space and time. A few of these are described below. Many more innovations are in the developmental stage.

• A Physics professor prepares short Quicktime videos in which he goes over classroom material that students are likely to find especially difficult. These are available on demand for students' review.
• The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures is creating a “virtual language laboratory” that can be accessed over CWRUnet. Students will be able to do their language laboratory exercises at any time using any suitably equipped terminal that can access the network.
• A Mathematics professor is experimenting with ways in which students in a class can confer with one another and with the instructor about homework problems while all are at remote locations. Using digitizing tablets all parties to a conference will be able to view one another's written work and will be in voice contact for discussion.
• A professor of Religion has developed programs in several courses in which CWRU students work collaboratively with English language students at Waseda University (Tokyo). Teams of four students (two from CWRU, two from Waseda) have developed multimedia presentations that are available on the Worldwide Web.
• A professor of English uses CWRUnet as a vehicle for students to read and critique one another's writing. Students post drafts of essays on a computer bulletin board established for the class. Each student critiques the drafts of others and benefits from critiques of his/her own drafts.

The College of Arts and Sciences anticipates that in the next decade the greatest impact of distance learning in undergraduate education will continue to be in supplementing and enhancing the traditional classroom education of its largely traditional (and largely residential) student body. There will be many opportunities to build upon the classroom experience through electronically mediated interaction and collaboration among students and between students and faculty as well as through enhanced utilization of digital instructional and archival resources. All of the bulleted examples listed above are of this type. To date, most successful application of distance learning approaches in the educational programs of the College have come about as the result of the efforts of highly motivated individual faculty members. Funding, in many cases, was derived from grants solicited by those faculty members. For these types of distance learning techniques to become widespread in the College, significant additional resources will be needed to create and support infrastructure as well as to provide training and technical assistance to faculty. Training will be needed to make faculty aware of the range of pedagogic opportunities that are available as well as to improve faculty skills in the use of hardware and software. Funds also will be needed to acquire the ownership or rights to use digital media.

A second type of opportunity, as yet largely unexplored within the College, is that of importing instruction from sources outside the University. The range of instruction possible, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, is necessarily limited in a relatively small college with approximately 200 faculty members in 21 departments. Modern electronic two-way communication can provide the ability to supplement the experiences of our students with expertise not available on this campus. We envision a large variety of implementations of this idea, ranging from importing entire courses to guest lectures to, where appropriate, brief, cameo appearances by guests. Again, new resources will have to be identified if learning through this mechanism is to become commonplace in the College. Faculty will need training and assistance in arranging guest appearances and delivery of courses from remote sites. Additional high quality electronic classrooms will be required. Funds for acquiring courses from remote sites will be needed. (In some cases it may be possible to arrange trades of courses - one taught for CWRU by a professor at University X in return for another taught for University X by a CWRU professor. However, additional infrastructure would be required to make that arrangement work.)

A third model of distance learning, is one in which instruction designed at CWRU is exported elsewhere. We envision opportunities in this area, initially in fields in which professional accreditation may make a formal program of continuing education desirable e.g., Psychology, Communication Sciences). Opportunities may also exist for offering a limited number of undergraduate classes to nontraditional students not generally reached by the current programs of the College. Included among potential students for classes of this type are individuals who might plan ultimately to enroll at CWRU but who would like to complete a limited number of courses at a remote location first. Another possible target group is students in countries in which CWRU now recruits or would like to recruit. Careful planning and significant investment of resources will be necessary if we are to succeed in these areas, which we expect, initially, to be of less significance in the College than in many other parts of the University.

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