Administrative Barriers to adoption of distance education

A common question asked by educators from both the United States and those who visit from overseas, is, " What are the barriers to the adoption of distance education ?" The effectiveness of distance education has been proven; systems for teaching at a distance are well established overseas; there is a plethora of technology throughout this country, unlike any other in the world. Therefore, what stops us moving forward to set up state systems, university and college systems, and others? As far as higher education is concerned, part of the answer lies in the procedures locked into the universities' administrative systems that prevent changes in the way teaching is designed, delivered and administered. These are inert administrative systems that were originally built to meet the needs of traditional students in traditional classes taught by traditional professors. It has been suggested these administrative barriers can be found at four levels, namely the federal level, the regional level, the state level and thinstitutional level.

At the federal level, barriers include the criteria used to determine what programs are eligible for federal funding, and the criteria applied in monitoring and evaluating programs, which are heavily biased toward traditional forms of provision.

At regional level the accreditation process still uses campus based learning, faculty centered teaching and classroom based instruction as the basis for reviewing and evaluating programs. A hopeful pointer for the future is provided by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which has generated procedures for evaluating distance education when institutions in its jurisdiction undergo the accreditation process.

At State level, there are mechanisms that drive continuous investment in bricks and mortar education, and deny the expenditures that would establish virtual universities by means of telecommunications networks. Even if they wanted to, administrators are restricted in their freedom to move in this direction by traditional funding formulae. I am told that typical formulae used to generate square footage of space for education, being based on traditional day-time use, over generates on campus classroom space for 8.00 am to 5.00 pm teaching, and under-provides not only the communications technology but also the building facilities needed for off-campus learner support and instruction for distance learners.

At the institutional level the barriers include some of the administrative structures and procedures that are supposed to serve students but are often inappropriate for distance learners. They are found in the rules and regulations concerning registration, tuition payment procedures, student support services, library services, examinations, and most especially the provision of instruction at times and places convenient to the learner.

Probably the greatest number of barriers concern the management of faculty. Until, and unless, the conditions of appointment and the rewards in service of teachers endorse the importance of distance teaching, it is hard to see how our systems can be reformed. For example, it is still unusual for distance teaching to be named in a job description when faculty are being recruited. It is unusual for faculty to be assigned distance teaching as part of their "on-load" teaching responsibilities. Few institutions provide training programs that might support and encourage faculty with an interest in distance teaching. There are few instances of institutions identifying criteria of good distance teaching and applying them in recognizing and rewarding their faculty. Rarely indeed is a professor's distance teaching as carefully evaluated as conventional classroom lecturing. Rarely does a College dean reward a professor with a salary adjustment in recognition of work in distance teaching.

For the enthusiast, the innovative teacher who attempts to provide distance teaching in spite of the reward system, the limitations of working with a conventional administration become apparent very quickly. For example, it takes time to design good quality distance teaching, and it takes teamwork to produce and deliver. Therefore it is impossible for a professor to teach a full load of conventional classes and simultaneously to design a distance learning course for future presentation. Yet the administrative structures of our institutions seldom make provision for the professor to be released for a period, (I would recommend a year), to work with the graphic designers, instructional designers and evaluation specialists, video and audio specialists, and others, to develop a program for future presentation. By insisting on continuous conventional presentation in the here-and-now we set up an insurmountable barrier to the development of really good quality distance education programs. Ironically, if resources uld be released for such faculty to be released to work in a design team, the larger scale program that would result should, in the long run, bring additional income to the institution.

No barrier is as formidable as those associated with faculty promotion and tenure procedures. In many institutions the primary requirements for promotion and for tenure are publication in traditional journals and teaching in traditional classrooms. Even where a university's official policy recognizes the importance of distance teaching, faculty committees tend to be controlled by professors who have achieved their power by succeeding in older ways, and they do not usually give distance teaching the same consideration and recognition as class room teaching. When a candidate's publications are under review, the unfamiliar scholarship of distance education is likely to be regarded less seriously than other areas of study. Generally, the research that is published is in spite of the promotion and tenure committees rather than in response to encouragement and leadership from that quarter. University and College administrators, down to the level of Department Heads frequently "cop out" on the question of reformingonservative promotion and tenure committees by referring to "academic freedom" and the academic's privilege of "peer review". However the innovative academic is likely to be passed over in favor of traditional teaching and research, and in allowing this to happen the administration is failing in its leadership responsibilities.

The question has to be faced, how to reward faculty for teaching at a distance, and for undertaking and publishing research into the teaching process? The situation cries out for reform, and reform in these matters requires leadership from the top. Fortunately university Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Provosts, Deans and others are emerging who recognize this need for reform and are attempting to remove the administrative structures that stand in the way of distance education's development. The inclusion of distance teaching in the terms of service is now known, as is consideration of distance teaching in the promotion and tenure process. Such vision is still unusual, and people with thfuture of distance education at heart should give encouragement and support to those who display it, and press for their example to be more widely emulated.

Other administrative barriers have been identified. They include the problems of territoriality and the need to devise ways of rewarding institutions for collaborating instead of competing; intellectual property and the need to reform policies to take into account the different roles of faculty when working in design teams; collective bargaining and the need to encourage experimentation and innovation in faculty hiring arrangements. There are many other administrative barriers. Being a teacher rather than an administrator, I might have overlooked some that are more important than those I have mentioned, and the view of those I have mentioned is perhaps over-simplified. I hope what has been said, though, will encourage readers to look at their own institutions and to identify the administrative procedures that stand in the way of distance education, and then begin to publish them. I hope readers will send me further, perhaps better researched, information about the barriers they know that prevent the developmt of distance education. It would be valuable to have someone assemble a catalogue of the main ones. As suggested at the beginning of this commentary, the problems in developing distance education are not technological, nor even pedagogical. We have plenty of technology and we have a fair knowledge about how to use it. The big problems are associated with organizational change, change of faculty roles and change in administrative structures. Here we desperately need all the ideas and all the leadership that can be assembled. The starting point is to expose the problems.