Digital teaching and learning are certainly not new to everyone. During our year of discussions we learned from experts in the field who visited Wellesley or made their writings available to us. We learned that, while digital technology offers, at best, a nascent mode of delivering education, there are inspiring success stories.

We learned that hybrid approaches combining online teaching tools with traditional classroom methods have worked well in colleges around the country. While a few fully online initiatives appear promising, many have thrown in the towel during the last year. This is partly due to inflated expectations for the dot.com sector that were never realized, but it can also be attributed to paedagogical approaches that were not yet geared to provide the sort of engaging, edifying learning experience that rivals the best of archetypal classrooms. Where digitally delivered teaching and learning emerge, complicated issues follow. These include issues of the credit-worthiness of online courses, faculty workload, rewards, and recognition, and copyright concerns.

Yet inspiring advances in pedagogy and access to education are enabled by digital technology. The best practices to date set out to enhance the higher education experience, rather than to replace its current modes and structures, as we heard from expert after expert. The prÈcis that follows offers highlights from the insights they shared with us.

Targets

As Dean Georgia Nugent of Princeton University suggested to our committee, technology should always be easy to use. Second, it should allow us to present new, previously unimagined insights or perspectives. In Nugent's parlance, an online method is worthwhile if it "adds magic." Third, digital teaching and learning tools should challenge the imagination by engaging multiple senses: for example, "juxtaposing nano-technology and the galaxies." 2

The experts counsel us to think broadly about our overall institutional goals for digital teaching and learning. As Frank Newman told us, "Whether you like it or not, the technology needed for distance learning creeps in (to the university)" and for that reason, we need to ask lots of questions.3 How would the addition of online tools — or even courses — affect the existing curriculum and academic policies of the institution? Administrators, faculty, and staff should look for a sensible extension of the college's existing mission.

Teaching and learning should guide the use of technology--not the other way around. New technology should be used to facilitate, augment, or innovate in teaching and learning.

Faculty and student involvement

David Coates, informed by decades of experiences with the Open University of Great Britain, emphasized that enthusiasm among a core group of faculty members — and their direct engagement in planning — is essential to any scale of online learning program.

Indeed, faculty members who use some form of online learning — whether multimedia, websites, electronic bulletin boards, or simply e-mail — report that their time commitment for responding to student queries often increases considerably.6 Institutions will need to address these workload issues. Students also find themselves distributing their time differently to their studies. In turn, their expectations in the informal culture of e-mail and online chat has greatly expanded "office" hours.

Much of this additional time is well spent, as some of our members have confirmed from their own teaching experiences. Nonetheless, faculty and students would benefit from a set of guidelines for communicating questions and transmitting information appropriately and effectively.

  • Faculty members are lecturing less. Their role is becoming more like that of a guide or a coach. As the saying goes, we are moving from the "sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side."

Quality assurance

  • "Quality control issues are even more delicate in distance learning situations than in on-site teaching, because both the teaching material and the process of learning is so much more public than private." 7

New and more thorough methods of evaluating courses, students, faculty members are available, and online learning may offer an opportunity to explore them.

Pedagogy

  • "Children and adolescents will learn how to use new materials by forging through — they won't take time to read the "instruction manual." They learn using games and examining images.8

Today's youngest students do not want to focus simply on text. This has important implications for the way postsecondary education will be delivered in the near future. John Seely Brown points out that students are increasingly involved with images in the learning process and digital learning methods enable this.9 Online learning also exploits the value of exercises and games. New software and games take otherwise dry topics and make them enticing. One seasoned academician and leader in digital learning methods commented, "It's pretty rare to hear a truly exciting lecture." 10

  • Pure classroom versus pure online learning is no longer a reality.11

We now have a blending of the two in most colleges and universities. The ongoing change in pedagogies means that virtual classrooms and traditional classrooms are becoming more similar — and will no doubt continue to evolve.

Financial considerations

  • Online learning will only work if there is a "clear commitment of the appropriate college authorities to the provision of adequate funding." 12

A college or university that embarks on a program of online learning should do so with the recognition that this is not an "add on" item, but rather, part of the established mission of the institution and worthy of ongoing funding. Future expansion of such programs should be anticipated.

  • The early predictions of great savings through digital technology have not materialized for institutions or for students.

Technology must be modernized continually. Increasing numbers of information technology specialists are needed to train professors, staff, and students to use the high-tech tools.

Innovations and collaborations

The experts we heard from offered many different ideas for engaging students and faculty members in a community setting.

  • Centers where faculty can receive instruction in new technologies and applications are essential. Faculty will need help with production, graphics, and other course support.

  • Find ways to bring students together as they work with computers, whether it's a computer room in the dorm or a free-standing computer center. They tend to collaborate well in small clusters, if the computers are arranged this way.13

  • Sir John Daniel, formerly head of the Open University, reported last year that there were 20,000 online study groups or mutual-interest groups at the O.U., demonstrating that computer-based tools can encourage widespread collaboration.

  • Partnerships with similar institutions can broaden and deepen curricula and offer opportunities for colleagues to learn from one another while creating a new approach to subject matter.

Alumnae and alumnae initiatives

  • New technology can bring alumni back into the community and establish an ongoing connection.

This is particularly true if a college or university invites alumni/ae to contribute themselves by teaching about their areas of professional expertise.

  • Modulized course materials lend themselves well to these not-for-credit offerings.

Early alumni offerings at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Oxford, and Cornell have experimented with brief modules that allow alumni to participate in a course (some call them "courselets") in small segments. These segments then become available for use in other formats, perhaps in a professor's regular courses for residential students or as part of a collaborative course team-taught by several professors.

  • Not-for-credit courses may not sustain engaged students.

While the evidence is not yet in, observers are concerned that, without the incentives of grading, credit, or future credentials, students may not persevere in online courses.

Partners

The experts we learned from have suggested that developing partnerships is one of the greatest opportunities of digitally delivered education and one of the most complicated. We were advised to:

Acknowledgements

The President's Advisory Committee on Wellesley in the Digital Age benefited from the experiences of our own members who have worked with the General Education Network to embark on the production of their own online courses and from the insights of Wellesley's top Information Services professionals. Specialists such as Christopher Dede of Harvard University, David Coates of Wake Forest and formerly of the Open University of Great Britain, Georgia Nugent of Princeton University, and Frank Newman of Brown University helped shape and inform our deliberations. Many others offered insight during national conferences on digital learning, copyright issues, faculty concerns, and quality assurance or in informal conversations. Current articles, book excerpts, and Internet-based texts focusing on recent developments and experimentation with digital learning tools also informed our discussions (see WDA bibliography).

Endnotes
  1. S. Georgia Nugent (October 30, 2001). From "Evangelical Principles for the Role of Information Technology in Teaching and Learning,"a presentation by Dr. Nugent, Dean of Technology and Teaching, Princeton University, to the President's Advisory Committee on Wellesley in the Digital Age.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Frank Newman (November 19, 2001). Comments during a meeting with Jamie Scurry, William S. Reed, and Holly Madsen at Brown University, Providence, RI, November 19, 2001.
  4. David Coates (May 1, 2001). Comments to the President's Advisory on Wellesley in the Digital Age, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA.
  5. Newman.
  6. Elliott Masie (March 1, 2002). Strategies for acceptance. Available online: http://www.elearningmag.com/elearning/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=11754
  7. Coates.
  8. Newman.
  9. John Seely Brown (September 25, 2001). Forum for the Future of Higher Education, Aspen, CO.
  10. Newman.
  11. Ibid.
  12. Coates.
  13. Jamie Scurry (November 19, 2001). Comments during a meeting with Frank Newman, William S. Reed, and Holly Madsen at Brown University, Providence, RI.
  14. Nugent.