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Online Learning News and Research
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Sunday, October 21, 2001
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/default.asp?show=article&id=889 The Distance Learning Playing Field: Do We Need Different Hash Marks? The Technology Source, September/October 2001 by Stephen Ruth and Jiwan Giri Universities are increasingly involved in the deployment of distance learning approaches across the curriculum. Not surprisingly, different units on campus often possess widely varying perspectives on the role and potential contribution of distance learning. A university's chief financial officer may view distance learning as a mixed blessing, offering a possible reduction in unit costs in the long term but with potentially severe upfront expense. A dean or faculty chairperson may regard distance learning with enthusiasm that is tempered with concern about faculty workloads and rewards. The individual faculty member may worry about being supplanted someday by a virtual teacher. Students' views are equally complex—some welcome the convenience of distance learning, while others fear losing the face-to-face interaction of the more traditional learning experience. As in a highly competitive athletic contest, the various players and coaches stake out their positions and contend for the best possible result at each institution. Our purpose in this article is to try to define the playing field and the players a bit more clearly—to suggest an approach to classifying distance learning methodologies so that they can be conveniently viewed on a two-dimensional scale, like an athletic field....
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