Starting this fall, the University will offer a master’s degree in applied information management that can be completed from application to matriculation without printing a single assignment or sitting in a stuffy lecture hall.
The AIM degree has been offered on-site at the University of Oregon Portland Center since 1986. It is an interdisciplinary degree that combines aspects of management, technology and communications.
The same faculty who have taught the course in a traditional setting are in the process of transferring the curriculum to the Web.
“It’s a challenge,” said Kim Sheehan, an adjunct professor with AIM. “It takes much more planning.”
The lectures, office hours and other trappings of an in-the-flesh course are replaced with Internet technology. PowerPoint slides with audio overlays of the professor’s lecture can be played and replayed at a student’s leisure. On-line document sharing and chat rooms will make possible virtual small-group work. Real time on-line bulletin boards will allow students to exchange their thoughts at anytime, free from the limitations of a discussion section that may meet only once or twice a week.
“If a student has a great idea at 3 o’clock in the morning, they can share it right then,” Sheehan said.
But there are some concerns that the great flexibility afforded to students by an on-line course will be a detriment; there will be no fixed time for students to focus all of their attention on the subject as there is in a traditional lecture or discussion course, she said.
Sheehan doesn’t discount the value of the social skills and face-to-face interactions that happen in a bricks-and-mortar classroom. There are fears that “people skills” may be lost when e-mails replace discussions in the wired university. AIM administrators said they are not concerned because the program is offered only to students with at least five years of professional experience beyond a bachelor’s degree.
“I don’t think on-line will ever replace on-site,” said Linda Ettinger, the project director of the AIM on-line degree. “But it can be very helpful for a particular segment of the population.”
She expects the program to expand higher education offerings to students who may not have pursued a graduate degree because they didn’t live near a university or continuation center.
This July, 15 students will be selected for the program’s inaugural quarter. They will pay the same tuition as students enrolled in the traditional curriculum.
The degree program is part of a statewide project to enhance distance education programs. Seventeen programs at eight Oregon University System institutions are being upgraded or started from scratch in an attempt to create a “second generation” of distance education in the state, said the project’s director, Holly Zanville, who is also the OUS associate vice chancellor for academic affairs.
The “first generation,” which was implemented over the last decade, was based mostly on delivering lectures over the state’s satellite interactive video network. As student demand for faster delivery of courses increases, the state is looking to deliver distance education at higher speeds via the Internet.
OUS secured $1.4 million from Congress to implement these programs. Dollars were allocated for the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership by the 1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965. Oregon’s grant proposal was one of only 29 to be selected out of the 653 that the Department of Education received in 1999.
The AIM program received $124,250 to set up its on-line degree program, which will run parallel to the existing on-site program. An additional $57,000 grant came from eCollege.com, a Denver-based Internet learning provider.
OUS is studying out-sourcing the technology behind on-line learning to private companies such as eCollege.com, WebCT, EduSOFT and click2learn.com, said Zanville.
“We don’t all have enough infrastructure to run this stuff,” she said.
As the new programs and partnerships are implemented, OUS will evaluate them for feasibility and cost-effectiveness. A draft set of guidelines to cover the academic, technical and service concerns of taking higher education on-line, will be presented to the State Board of Higher Education this summer, she said.
Ettinger sees the many advances the state is making toward on-line higher education as steps in a necessary direction.
“Technology will continue to evolve,” she said. “There’s not a lot of definite information available yet about on-line education because it’s happening right now.
“I think the whole state is going to learn a lot through this process.”