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11/05

DALLAS TELELEARNING INTERACTIVE TELECOURSES COST-EFFECTIVE OPTION FOR DEVELOPING UNDERGRAD DISTANCE ED COURSES
Developing courses for delivery at a distance is a costly and time-consuming process that is often taken on by faculty members who are not skilled instructional designers or curriculum developers. Additionally, some institutions offering distance education courses may get caught up in a course development cycle that may be unnecessarily duplicated, especially at the general education undergraduate level. For example, the same undergraduate-level United States History course or Abnormal Psychology course might have five sections taught by two or three different faculty, each of whom has put in the time and generated the cost to develop his or her own unique distance education course.

Distance education program and institutional administrators realize this kind of scenario is not a cost-effective way to build distance education courses.

The Dallas County Community College District’s (DCCCD) Dallas TeleLearning division has created a relatively new set of undergraduate-level interactive telecourses, which were first launched in 2001 and are continuously being built today. These telecourses are offered through licensing agreements and are being utilized as a solution for offering rich, dynamic, and highly flexible undergraduate distance education courses in a way that can save on course development costs. MORE

ABOUT LICENSING FEES FOR INTERACTIVE TELECOURSES
Information about cost of Dallas TeleLearning telecourses. MORE

THE ADOPTION OF INNOVATION, PART II
This month we begin our expansion of last month’s cover story - “The Adoption of Innovation: Online Learning Business Plans, Strategies, Change Management and Leadership “ - with an overview of a business planning model - herein referred to as BPM - that has been created and fine-tuned over time by MSU Global.

As noted on its website, MSU Global is “Michigan State University’s entrepreneurial academic business unit that reports to the Provost and works with partners across the MSU campus, and worldwide, to develop and market online institutes, programs and services.”

The BPM is an internal document that has been developed over four years, says MSU Global Director Chris Geith. “It is a model and a template for planning new online degree and certificate programs. In our role at MSU we are like internal consultants to the deans and the department chairs. When they have an idea about putting something online, this template helps prepare the business plan for their idea.”

The BPM starts with an overall process summary checklist and then moves into five phases that outline concept development, proposal formulation, internal approval, implementation and evaluation. There’s also a Program Costing Model that is utilized to capture expenses. What follows is a description of each of these BPM items, based on an interview Educational Pathways conducted with Geith. MORE

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