What’s on educators’ minds these days in the world of online teaching and learning? I posed this question to myself for this installment of "The Digital Optimist" column that I write on rare occasions. This line of thought is rooted in well over 500 interviews I have had with educators over the past four years. With all these voices in mind, here’s a short list of what emerged:

Faculty Training

While faculty members are increasingly adopting educational technologies and getting trained in how to use course management systems, there still seems to be a large contingent of faculty members who can’t or don’t want to get on the educational-technology train. The dedicated people who provide faculty training do everything they possibly can to help these faculty members get on board, but there are still many who are reluctant to take the ride.

The lack of willingness to change also falls within the ranks of high-level administrators at colleges and universities. For example, I recently heard an interesting story about a successful online program, that will remain nameless, that consisted of 18 fully online courses that were developed and successfully implemented completely at the department level over a period of four years. The educators running this program were recently informed that the institution will not support their efforts..

The 18 fully online courses, combined, is noted as the largest online program within this particular university’s system, enrolling about 1,200 students annually. The department chair built the program up from a few courses he personally had integrated with technology, eventually hiring a talented educational technologist(who created a successful home-grown course management system) and a distance education coordinator. An internal departmental office to fully self-support this online teaching and learning initiative was also created.

When the department chair recently attempted to get support beyond the department level, he basically got a "no" answer. The department chair noted that even though "many faculty across campus have marveled at what we have done, several people high up in the administration, for whatever reasons, are wedded to the idea of a brick-and-mortar institution and have never embraced this." The end result, according to the department chair, is that the 18 online courses are scheduled to close down this summer.

I must add one caveat here, which is that I did not get a chance to talk to the high-level administrators referred to here. I am only going by what was told to me, in no uncertain terms, by the department chair.

Cost Issues

Educators are still struggling with clearly identifying how much online education costs. However, a much clearer picture related to cost issues is starting to come into focus among those who study this issue. An upcoming National University Telecommunications (NUTN) conference, for instance, to be held on June 11 - 13 in San Francisco, will include what looks like a very interesting cost-related plenary panel in which members of NUTN, Sloan-C, and the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) "will share their insights gained from a research study that is identifying and documenting effective business strategies for online and distance education across institutional types and across distance and online learning modalities, including hybrid and synchronous approaches." For more information, see www.nutn.org.

Open and Community Software Development

The Sakai project is a $6.8 million, two-year (started in January 2004) community-source software development effort "to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education." It’s being funded by the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the uPortal Consortium and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI), with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Community-source and open-source software development projects have long been a topic of interest to online educators, and Sakai really does look promising. Moodle is another promising initiative. Moodle is an open-source course management system that continues to be further developed and implemented worldwide through the dedicated efforts of its developers and its large community of users. It needs to be noted, however, that regardless of all this free software for creating effective online teaching and learning environments, someone has to pay for the maintenance and support of these applications. Many educational technologists say the cost savings when using open or community source does not really exist and that going with a well-developed, time-tested, well-supported commercial vendor is ultimately the best and safest option. In short, companies such as Blackboard, WebCT, eCollege, and Angel Learning don’t look to be going out of business because of the open- and community-source movements.

EdPath Editorial Advisory Board member Dick Hezel, from Hezel Associates, is doing a lot of work in the area of partnership development between U.S. and international providers of online learning. According to Hezel’s research, which will be covered in more depth in next month’s issue, the Bologna Declaration in 1999 advocated a two-tier higher education system in Europe that is similar to the U.S., resulting in a culture change that is increasing the likelihood for Europeans to take part in lifelong learning experiences. This change is opening up a promising market for U.S. institutions to partner with European institutions, particularly in English-speaking countries. While still a highly competitive landscape, the desire of European students to obtain American degrees still exists, meaning that new online collaborations could be on the horizon.

The adoption of ePortfolio technology and systems is like a quiet, highly meaningful and purposeful religious movement that has the potential of exploding into the mainstream. There will be lots more on this topic in future issues of Educational Pathways. For now, I will simply say that ePortfolios are significantly changing the way student’s learn, teacher’s teach and institution’s examine their missions and goals. Stay tuned.

To put it succinctly, Macromedia Breeze web conferencing software is a big hit. Many educational technologists use tools like Breeze when they hold real-time web-based meetings. I’ve had a number of interviews lately with people who have hooked me up into Breeze in order to make a dynamic presentation featuring audio, PowerPoint slides and web-based demonstrations and links. Web-based presentation software, in general, while not new, seems to be growing more sophisticated, becoming easier to use and increasing rapidly in usage as bandwidth becomes a non-issue and more consumers buy into high-speed Internet access. I expect to see online learning programs continue to increase their usage of synchronous events using tools like Breeze, regardless of the constraints imposed by students living in different time zones.

The theme of the upcoming Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET) Conference, to be held in New Orleans on November 2-5, has what I consider a cautiously optimistic and fascinating tone: "Legislators, students, and the general public in the U.S. are demanding that higher education change its ways. They want better instruction, expanded access, more efficient and effective student services, and a faster response to changing curricular needs in the marketplace, just for starters. Unfortunately, they want it all at a time when higher education budgets are shrinking and public support is on the wane; a time when a major faculty exodus is occurring, as large numbers of baby boomers retire; a time when our student population is rapidly changing, with some institutions overwhelmed by demand while others can’t fill their seats, and all seeing a greater number of students who are unprepared for college and in need of remedial help. In response to these challenges, some institutions are finding creative ways to use e-learning and other technology-supported services. Can some of the best practices from institutions around the world inspire a new image for higher education in a global economy? Can we develop a cohesive vision for a new academic ecosystem that incorporates what we have discovered about e-learning, both from our past errors and "e-llusions" and our current successes in policy, pedagogy, and services?" For more information, see http://conference.wcet.info/2005/.

Finally, I want to note that all of these topics, and many more, will be covered in much greater detail in future issues of Educational Pathways through more interviews with those educators who are moving us into the next evolution of higher education.