Definitions of E-Learning Courses and Programs

NOTE: SEE MY SEPTEMBER 7, 2012, POSTING OF "UPDATED E-LEARNING DEFINITIONS" FOR A REVISED DRAFT OF THIS DOCUMENT INCORPORATING CHANGES SUGGESTED BY READERS.  

Colleagues:  The following draft document is posted here for your comment and feedback.  Our goal is to evolve some standard definitions surrounding online distance education to encourage better sharing of research data and effective practices.  Please review and leave your comments below.  Thanks.

Definitions of E-Learning Courses and Programs

Version 1.0

Developed for Discussion within the Online Learning Community

By

Frank Mayadas

and

Gary E. Miller

As e-learning has evolved into a global change agent in higher education, it has become more diverse in its form and applications.  This increased diversity has complicated our ability to share research findings and best practices, because we lack a shared set of definitions to distinguish among the many variations on e-learning that have arisen.  This paper is designed to provide practitioners, researchers, and policy makers with a common set of terms and definitions to guide the ongoing development of the field.  Our hope is that it will move us toward a set of shared, commonly understood definitions that will facilitate the sharing of research data and professional standards in our field.  In developing the definitions below, we have tried to incorporate existing definitions developed by others.  We do not present these as the ultimate definitions, but as a step toward more commonly held standards as our field continues to evolve.  Additions and revisions will be published as needed.

The Impact of E-Learning

While e-learning has become the primary form of distance education, it is also transforming instruction on campus.  Higher education historically is a campus-based institution.  Many students live on campus for the duration of their studies; others live near campus and commute to campus to take classes and to receive campus-based support services.  This physical connection has defined the relationship between the student and the institution.  It has also helped to shape the curriculum itself.  E-learning has blurred these traditional relationships, removing geography as a defining element in the student-institution relationship.   

Technology-enhanced learning has evolved both from enhancements to earlier generations of face-to-face teaching and enhancements to earlier generations of distance education.  Engaged intentional design of learning experiences has also evolved to promote the most effective design to serve the learners, their life experiences and the opportunities and limitations of the particular environment.  For example, many graduate programs have deliberately designed programs for working adults, which are predominantly offered online but also include short-term face-to-face residencies.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define a common measure for instruction.  The “seat time” measure on which common understanding of a “credit hour” is largely based, is being challenged as new instructional models and alternatives to traditional classroom lectures become more widely accepted.  However, the credit hour remains the most widely accepted measure used to compare courses across different delivery environments.  Continued growth in the number and diversity of learning environments will increase the need for a common standard by which different learning environments can be compared.  The following definitions assume the credit hour as the primary means by which courses are defined, regardless of delivery environment.

As e-learning has matured, several models have emerged that have different geographical and curricular implications.  The following definitions are designed to help both faculty and students better understand the different kinds of e-learning that are now practiced in higher education and to provide institutions with some standard models to encourage effective sharing of data about e-learning, at both the individual course and the curriculum level.

COURSE-LEVEL DEFINITIONS

Traditional Course – Course activity is organized around scheduled class meetings.

Traditional courses are measured by the number of hours spent in required class meetings.  Such courses may involve some sort of computer usage—for example, a software simulation or laboratory or design software for art or engineering applications—but the course is still anchored to the normal time spent in classes.  For the purposes of this paper, these course are considered to be “traditional” courses.

Web-Enhanced Course – Online course activity complements class sessions without reducing the number of required class meetings.

The University of Central Florida was among the first institutions to adopt this term as an official category.  When Internet access is required to complete course requirements, and when this Internet-based work augments but does not supplant classroom activity, the course is considered a “web-enhanced course.”  Traditional courses and web-enhanced courses are very similar, but are placed in separate categories because web-enhanced courses require additional faculty and student support, and very likely additional technology.  Web-enhanced courses are not normally considered to be e-learning courses, but are described here because they may be a step toward a hybrid or online course.  The National Center for Academic Transformation calls this a “supplemental” approach, in which some technology-based, out-of-class activities are used to encourage greater student engagement with course content.

Hybrid Course – Online activity is mixed with classroom meetings, replacing at least 20 percent, but not all required face-to-face meetings.

When the technologies used for education and communication outside the classroom are used to supplant some of the classroom work, reducing the time actually spent in the classroom, the result is a hybrid course.  For example, if a course traditionally meets in a classroom three times per week, a hybrid or blended version might use online sessions to replace one or two of the traditional weekly classroom sessions or to eliminate all but a few key face-to-face sessions for laboratory work or examinations. A general rule is to classify a course as hybrid if online components replace a minimum of one class meeting per week in a typical three-credit course or to replace all but a few key face-to-face sessions for laboratory work or examinations.  NCAT describes this as a “replacement” approach, in which online activity replaces some class meetings. The Sloan Foundation required that funding for such courses use online experiences to offset at least 30 percent of traditional classroom experiences.

Hybrid courses are one component of E-Learning.  They are particularly relevant in programs that serve students within commuting distance of campus.  They increase flexibility but do not totally eliminate the need for students to have physical access to a campus facility.  Hybrid courses will be attractive to many traditional full-time students, in addition to non-traditional learners, typically working adults who are within commuting distance and who wish to earn a degree.

Note that, in the past, the terms “blended” and “hybrid” have been applied at both the course level and the program level without differentiation.  This has created a degree of confusion.  Our definitions use “hybrid” at the course level and “blended” at the program level to allow for clearer distinctions in usage.

“Emporium” Course – This model, designed for on-campus use, eliminates all class meetings and replaces them with a learning resource center featuring online materials and on-demand personalized assistance.

This model was developed through several NCAT-funded innovations designed to give campus-based students control over when they study.  The purpose is to allow students to choose when they access course materials, to choose what types of learning materials they use depending on their needs, and to set their own pace in working with the materials.  It assumes that students have access to sophisticated instructional software and one-on-one on-site help.  It replaces formal class meetings with increased access to instructional assistance and allows institutions to combine multiple lecture sections into one large section.

Online Course – All course activity is done online; there are no required face-to-face sessions within the course and no requirements for on-campus activity.

Online courses totally eliminate geography as a factor in the relationship between the student and the institution. They consist entirely of online elements that facilitate the three critical student interactions: with content, the instructor, and other students.

While these courses may appeal to on-campus students, they are designed to meet the needs of students who do not have effective access to campus.  They may reside near the campus, or they may reside quite a distance away in other states or even in other countries.   Over the years, universities have sought to serve this “non-traditional” population through a variety of media—from correspondence courses to satellite teleconferences—but only since the mid-1990s has technology enabled easy and continuous communication—interaction—among the learners and instructors at a distance. The Internet also has made library and other information resources available to this group.  Improvements in basic technology also permit this user group access to complex data as in precision images, mathematical visualizations and simulations of various kinds.  Social networking applications allow these learners to participate in both formal and informal learning communities.

PROGRAM-LEVEL DEFINITIONS

Similar distinctions among delivery environments can be made at the program level.  Degree and certificate programs can be designed with a mix of traditional and e-learning courses in order to serve populations who have different levels of access to campus.

Traditional Classroom Program—The program may include a mix of traditional, web-enhanced, or hybrid courses, but all courses require some face-to-face sessions.

These programs take advantage of web-based applications to enhance learning, but without changing the traditional requirement that students attend classes on campus or in other traditional learning environments.  As a result, online elements do not significantly improve access to commuting or distant students.

Multi-Format Program – A program mixes, along with traditional classroom courses, other formats that use a variety of different delivery modes, web-enhanced, hybrid, fully online courses, synchronous distance education, etc., without a specific access goal.

These programs use a variety of technologies and course designs to provide a variety of learning experiences.  Typically, choice of technology is less related to the geographic or time needs of students than on curricular goals or instructional needs.   

Blended Program – A significant percentage, but not all of the credits required for program completion are offered fully online.  Typically, up to 30 percent of the curriculum may be offered as face-to-face or hybrid courses or other face-to-face formats or as independent study.

These programs provide increased access to distant students who are able to come to campus for some courses, laboratory work, intensive residencies, or other occasional group sessions.  Ideally, face-to-face sessions will be organized to minimize travel requirements for distant students.  Some academic support services should be available to distant students as well.

Online Program – All credits required to complete the program are offered as fully online courses.  Students can complete the program completely at a distance, with no required face-to-face meetings.




Fully online programs are designed with the truly distant student in mind.  Institutions that offer fully online programs should also take care to provide support services—registration, testing, advising, library support, etc.—at a distance.

Implementation

The authors are indebted to the many colleagues too numerous to list individually who have contributed to these definitions by providing feedback on earlier drafts and who, in some cases, have pioneered in developing innovative applications of technology to create new learning environments.

These definitions are a work in progress that will be updated annually as needed.   The authors welcome comments and anticipate that they will prepare occasional companion pieces to add new definitions as the field evolves, in the hope the community will come together around a common set of definitions that will guide research, practice, and policy.  We encourage researchers and professional associations to adopt the definitions with the goal that a shared vocabulary will facilitate the sharing of research data, increase the transfer of research into practice, and, ultimately, promote standards of excellence for the field.

Your comments are welcome in this ongoing discussion.

Version 1.0  8/2/2012

Instructions for Life from the Dalai Lama

Below are the “Instructions for Life” by the Dalai Lama—“20 Ways to Get Good Karma.”  They are worth keeping posted on your bulletin board or inside your medicine cabinet or on your refrigerator.  I especially like the last two.

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
   -  Respect for self,
   -  Respect for others and
   -  Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and
    think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
20. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

"Where are the Others?"

I just finished reading Along the Way, an excellent father/son memoir by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Toward the end, Sheen writes:

"There's an old saying: If you arrive at the Kingdom alone you must answer just one question: 'Where are the others?' We are made so that we must travel alone, yet we cannot do so without community. No one can live our lives for us or carry our inner burdens, yet we can come to know ourselves only through our compassion for others." 

This, it seems to me, is what is missing from the public debate over health care, gun control, and some other issues today.   Our nation has polarized over political ideology.  And, for the most part, that ideology itself is not well-articulated or well-communicated.  Instead, people latch on to pieces of it:  freedom of markets, corporations as independent operators in society,  the right to keep and bear arms, etc.  Missing is a discussion of fundamental moral issues: 

What defines the U.S. as a "community?" 

As citizens, what are our responsibilities to others who share our community?

The big public policy issues are, in the final analysis, not questions of cost or freedom of markets, but of responsibility.  What is our responsibility to others?   Government--and the taxes that support it--are the vehicle by which we help each other in order to sustain our community.   If we believe the Christian adage, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," how should we use our government?  And, as a community, what should we expect of corporations that thrive on the work of individuals in our community?

2011 Alpha Sigma Lambda Keynote

Last year, I was honored to be invited to give the keynote talk when World Campus graduates were inducted into Alpha Sigma Lambda.  I talked about my own history as an adult student and about the growing importance of adult learning as our society adapts to the needs of the Information Era.   I was delighted to learn that the talk had been recorded and posted on YouTube.   So . . . here it is, for what it may be worth. 

Gary Miller - Keynote address for the 2011 Alpha Sigma Lambda ceremony - YouTube

Ben Franklin's Lesson

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.  In it, there is this paragraph that I find to be very important for Americans today:

Tocqueville came to the conclusion that there was an inherent struggle in America between two opposing impulses: the spirit of rugged individualism versus the conflicting spirit of community and association building.  Franklin would have disagreed.  A fundamental aspect of Franklin’s life, and of the American society he helped to create, was that individualism and communitarianism, so seemingly contradictory, were interwoven.  The frontier attracted barn-raising pioneers who were ruggedly individualistic as well as fiercely supportive of their community.  Franklin was the epitome of this admixture of self-reliance and civic involvement, and what he exemplified became part of the American character (p. 103).

            It strikes me that what Tocqueville called “inherent struggle” is the yin and yang of American society.   The opposites are, in fact, just as Franklin saw them:  two aspects that, taken singly, are in opposition but that, taken together, define the American character.  Throughout our history, it has been this kind of civic individualism that has allowed Americans to solve problems and to innovate to create a better society.  It is what allowed us to be not just a nation of immigrants, but a nation of immigrants who created a unique culture.

            Today, in our politics and in our culture more generally, we are ignoring the unity that these apparent opposites allow us.  We are focused on the yin and the yang—the sun and the shadow—rather than on the mountain they define.  We need a Franklin to remind us that, as he wrote, “The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively.”

Reference:  Isaacson, Walter.  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy

Note:  This paper was delivered to the Central Pennsylvania Torch Club 6/13/2012

For much of the first half of the 20^th century, Jane Addams was one of the best-known American women in the world.  The founder of Hull House, she was also a leader of social reform nationally and internationally, a true public intellectual, and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Today, she is less well known.  Her influence lives on, but this year suffered a setback when Hull House closed after 123 years of service to the people of Chicago and beyond.  This is a good time to look back on Jane Addams’ contributions to how Americans think about their communities and about democracy in general.

Early Life

            Addams was born in Illinois in 1860, the daughter of a wealthy mill owner.  John Addams served eight terms in the Illinois Senate and was a friend and supporter Abraham Lincoln and widely known as a man of principle.  Her mother died when she was three, so her father became a major influence on her thinking.  Similarly, Lincoln’s ideals became a continual source of strength for her in later years.  At the age of 17, she entered Rockford Seminary and, upon graduation in 1881, moved to Philadelphia, where she hoped to attend the Woman’s Medical College.  However, her health failed, due to the combination of her shock over her father’s death, illness, and complications from a spinal injury she suffered in childhood.  She was forced to end her studies.  She spent the next few months in bed and struggled with trying to find a new way to fulfill her need to live a useful life.  On her doctor’s advice, she traveled to Europe.  At first, she used travel to expand her knowledge of arts, architecture, and languages, like many young people before her.  During a second trip, however, she visited Toynbee Hall, an innovative “settlement”—a residential outreach program—that had just been founded in the slums of London’s East End in 1884.  It gave her a concrete model for how she could create that “useful life” that she so wanted to life.  She decided to devote her energies to working with the poor and to create a place where educated young women could put their ideals into action.   When she returned to Illinois, she and her friend and collaborator Ellen Gates Starr rented an old mansion on the West Side of Chicago, which became Hull House, one of the first Settlement Houses in the U.S.

Chicago

            The story of Jane Addams in inextricably linked to the story of Chicago.  In the 1890s, Chicago had become America’s second-largest city and a microcosm of the impact that the Industrial Revolution was having on American society and culture.  H.G. Wells described Chicago as “the most perfect presentation of nineteenth century individualist industrialism I have ever seen” (Citizen, p. 186).   The Industrial Revolution began as a transportation revolution, and Chicago had become a transportation hub, connecting the settled east and the new communities of the American west.   As the Chicago Stockyards attest, it had also became both an agricultural and manufacturing center.  More importantly, it was a city of immigrants.  Seventy-eight percent of Chicago’s 1 million population in 1890 were either foreign-born, the children of immigrants, or African Americans

            Chicago was also a microcosm of the changing social currents that were reshaping American life.  The Haymarket Riot, which began when someone threw a bomb at police as they broke up a peaceful labor demonstration for an 8-hour workday—happened just two years before Hull House opened.  It illustrates the complex confrontations among Robber Baron industrialists, immigrant labor, urbanization, and radical ideologies—from social Darwinism to socialism, to anarchism—that were coming into conflict as the Industrial Age reached its full maturity in the U.S.

            At the same time, in this turmoil-filled environment, Chicago had already earned its reputation for political corruption.   

Hull House

Addams and Starr scanned the teeming cultural mix of Chicago’s working class neighborhoods and decided to focus on the west side, on Halstead Street in Chicago’s 19^th Ward.  The area was, essentially, an immigrant slum.  Eighteen nationalities were represented.   They began by renting what came to be called Hull House (after the man who built it).  They based their plans for the settlement on Toynbee Hall, with three distinct differences:

·      First, their settlement house would focus specifically on working with immigrants, who dominated the neighborhood.

·      They expected that mostly women would be attracted to be residents at Hull House.

·      Third, the settlement would focus on what Addams described as the “western American” approach to social classes.  She had been unimpressed by way the English social class system shaped the work at Toynbee Hall.  The goal, as Ellen Starr wrote in a letter to a friend, was “to learn to know the people and understand them and their way of life; to give them what we have to give out of our culture and leisure and over-indulgence and to receive the culture that comes out of self-denial and poverty and failure, which these people have always known” (Citizen, p. 181).

            Their work was based in three guiding ethical principles:  (1) to teach by example, (2) to practice cooperation, and (3) to practice social democracy.   In describing “teaching by example,” Addams used the metaphor of the grandmother’s quality of emotional engagement guided by intuition and experience.  Variations on her basic idea were also being developed by John Dewey, who had come to the University of Chicago to open a laboratory school and who often lectured at Hull House.  The second principle combined cooperation and nonresistance.  As Addams described it, the goal represented by this principle was “to live with opposition to no man, with recognition of the good in every man, even the meanest.” (Citizen, p. 184).    This idea—of encouraging cooperation and avoiding antagonism, not taking sides—would also mark Addams’ later work in labor relations and the peace movement.  The third principle—practicing social democracy—was based on the notion that there are three dimensions of democracy—political democracy, economic democracy, and social democracy, or social equality.  It required that the Hull House residents treat everyone with equal courtesy, regardless of their social position, cleanliness, language, or education.

            Addams and Starr began by visiting their neighbors, some of whom were a bit distrustful.  For instance, some thought they were trying to convert them to Protestantism.  Addams decided that there would be no religious instruction at Hull House.  But, as they listened to their neighbors, they began to hear their stories and understand their needs.  They organized several different kinds of activities in response.

            Among the first were children’s clubs.  They learned that working mothers often had to lock their children inside their rooms while they went to work.   Since the normal work shift was 11 hours, this created significant health and safety issues for children of working mothers.   Addams and Starr organized two boys clubs and, later, a third, a drawing class, and, a weekday morning kindergarten. 

            They also offered weekly social receptions for adults, organized around ethnic groups, and a “Working People’s Social Science Club,” which included weekly public lectures on economic and social issues.  Addams later noted that the Social Science Club gave Hull House an “early reputation for radicalism.”  Meetings were held at 8 p.m. so that workers could attend after their 11-hour work shift.  Topics—chosen by the community—included strikes, socialism, trade unions, progressive taxation, unemployment, Christian socialism, etc.    The Wednesday night events drew people from across Chicago’s social strata, creating a cross-class and cross-ideology discussion of these issues.

            They also launched formal adult education classes—the first adult college extension courses in Chicago—academically rigorous courses in literature and art—that attracted factory workers, teachers, bank tellers, and others.  Eventually, this program would be incorporated into the new University of Chicago’s extension program.

            Less easy to categorize were activities that encompassed what Addams called “being neighborly”—going out into the community to see what they, individually and as a Settlement, could to do help individuals.  This included baby-sitting for working mothers, mind the sick, and attending the dying.   It was in this arena that they really began to learn about the their neighbors and the struggles that dominated their day-to-day lives.  Addams sprinkled anecdotes about this dimension of Hull House’s work in Hallstead Street neighborhood throughout her memoir, Twenty Years at Hull House.

Involvement in Social Movements

            It was, perhaps, inevitable that Addams—and Hull House, more generally—would become involved in the broader social issues that affected the neighborhood and the broader community of Chicago.  Her role as a civic activist began when she called attention to the serious problem of garbage collection in the neighborhood.  In those days, Chicago contracted with private firms to collect garbage.  However, Chicago government was corrupt, and collection in neighborhood was practically non-existent.  It had become a significant health issue in the neighborhood.  When Addams raised the issue, the solution was to name her Garbage Inspector.  She and a friend went out every week to monitor garbage collection and to report problems.  It was, in consideration, very good training for what was to follow.  

            Municipal corruption remained a serious issue in Chicago, and in 1893 Addams was invited to join a committee to organize the Civic Federation of Chicago, designed to concentrate “in one . . . nonpolitical nonsectarian center all the forces that are now laboring to advance our municipal, philanthropic, industrial, and moral interests, and to . . . energize . . . the conscience of Chicago.”  This was part of a national movement:  in 1894, there were more than eighty similar federations around the country.  Most—unlike the Chicago Federation—did not allow women as members.  For Addams, it was an opportunity to expand her vision.  She represented the 19^th Ward on the Central Council and also served on the Board of Directors and the Industrial Committee, as well as a special committee to create Lakeside Park.  It was her introduction to a broader role as a social reformer.

The Pullman Strike             In May of 1894, in the midst of a national economic depression, a major strike erupted at the Pullman Car Works in Chicago.  It was the result of dual pressures that the company had placed on its workers.  George Pullman had achieved international recognition by creating company towns for his workers.   However, in the economic crisis, two things happened:  First, foreman began to require that all Pullman workers move into the company town and rent homes there, as a way of increasing company revenues.  Second, the company cut wages by an average of 30 percent.   The result was that many families struggled to make ends meet.  “We struck at Pullman,” one worker said, “because we were without hope.”  The company refused to negotiate.  It locked out the 2,500 strikers and laid off the remaining 600 employees.  The strike broadened when, on June 26, the railroad workers union voted to boycott trains with Pullman cars and the General Managers Association, representing 24 railroad companies serving Chicago, agreed to fire any workers who refused to handle Pullman cars.  Eventually, the boycott affected more than 200,000 workers in 27 states and territories.  The General Managers Association arranged for one of its lawyers to be named a U.S. Special Attorney who then hired several hundred unemployed men, deputizing and arming them as U.S. Marshals to guard federal mail cars.

            Jane Addams, as a member of the Civic Federation’s Industrial Committee, was asked to sit on a Conciliation Board, to serve as a neutral third party for arbitration.   She focused on the principle of cooperation, insisting on taking no side and hoping to bring both sides together.   The result was extreme criticism from all sides.  The boycott was broken in August 1895, and the ARU died.  In the aftermath, a national commission was established to push for federal legislation requiring arbitration in future strikes.  Jane Addams was elected Secretary of the Commission.

            She also was active as a social reformer in other areas, working for legislation to reducing the working day for women from 11 hours to 8 and advocating the right of women to vote.  She was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.   Increasingly, she was widely sought as a speaker and writer, using the proceeds to maintain Hull House, which had quickly absorbed her small inheritance.   By 1915, she was one of the best-known public intellectuals in America.

Pacifism and the Nobel Prize

            Her popularity suffered significantly with the beginning of World War I in Europe.  Addams maintained a consistent pacifist and anti-war stance.  She also continued to advocate for immigrant rights at a time when Americans were increasingly fearful of radical ideas—socialism and anarchism, for instance—that they associated with immigrants.  In 1915 she was elected national chairperson of the Women’s Peace Party and, that same year, President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.   The first meeting was attended by women from all of the warring countries as well as neutral ones.  Afterwards, she toured Europe, hoping to persuade the heads of the warring countries to make peace.  She advocated a conference focused on continuous mediation, but that idea was rejected by President Wilson.  After the U.S. declaration of war in April, 1917, she responded to the blockade of the Central Powers with the declaration that the United States "should not allow the women and children of any nation to starve."  After the war she presided at international conferences of the league in Zurich in 1919, in Vienna in 1921, in The Hague in 1922, in Washington in 1924, in Dublin in 1926 and at Prague in 1929.

The Nobel Peace Prize

            In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which she shared that year with Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University.  In presenting the award, Nobel Committee member Halvat Koht, a professor of history at the University of Oslo, noted the growing international influence of America in the 20^th century.  Acknowledging that America had not always been the “power for peace that we should have wished for her, ” Koht noted that “America has at the same time fostered some of the most spirited idealism on earth.  It may be that this idealism derives its vigor from the squalor and evil produced by social conditions, in other words from the contrasts within itself.”  Addams had, in fact, bridged these contrasts for most of her adult life.  Koht summarized her work during the war period as follows:

Throughout the whole war she toiled for a peace that would not engender a new war, becoming, as she did so, the spokesman for the pacifist women of the world. Sometimes her views were at odds with public opinion both at home and abroad. But she never gave in, and in the end she regained the place of honor she had had before in the hearts of her people. Devotion to a cause always inspires respect, and in her devotion Miss Addams is truly American.

Legacy

Jane Addams died in 1935 at the age of 74.  A few weeks before her death, she was honored by a dinner at the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt hailed her as one of the world’s greatest living women.  Her obituary in the New York Times noted:

Miss Addams has been called "the greatest woman in the world," the "mother of social service," "the greatest woman internationalist" and the "first citizen of Chicago." With her idealism, serene, unafraid, militant, was always paramount. Devoted to the cause of social and political reform, to the betterment of the economic condition of the masses, to world peace and to internationalism, Miss Addams's influence was world-wide. She was, perhaps, the world's best-known and best-loved woman.  

            One evidence of how her reputation had been regained is that, five years later—ironically, while Europe was already engaged in a war that was engendered by the first world war—she was honored with a U.S. postage stamp.   

             Today, much of that legacy has been obscured by events.  Jane Addams is not widely known by younger Americans today.  The original settlement site was overtaken by expansion of the University of Illinois-Chicago campus in the 1960s, although the original mansion was kept as a museum.  Hull House operations moved to an old American Legion Hall, which was renamed the Jane Addams Hull House Center.  In 2002, it was sold and remodeled as a high-end fitness club.  And, in January of this year, the Hull House Association, the foundation on which her life’s work was built, announced that it was filing for bankruptcy.  It is now closed.  More than 300 employees lost their jobs.

            Still, there is a legacy that goes beyond the institution she created.             Hull House was established when the University of Chicago—which in many ways is the prototype of the modern research university—was itself just getting started, and the two shared some synergy.  John Dewey, who came to Chicago to open a laboratory school, became friends with Jane Addams and lectured at Hull House many times.  “The real question is not what we read,” Addams said of Hull House, “but what social use do we make of the mental and physical life we have thus acquired. Here we learn many things that we could not get in the school room . . . ”  Clearly, her idea of teaching by example and Dewey’s emerging ideas about progressive education—education for and by democracy—influenced each other.             

            As an active practitioner of pragmatist philosophy, Addams also influenced social policy, including the right of women to vote, civil rights for African-Americans, and the peace movement.   She remains a model for a public intellectual.   In fact, perhaps her most important legacy is as a role model.  While her work focused on helping society adapt to the changes brought about by industrialization, today we are facing changes that are at least as profound as we adapt to the information revolution.   Jane Addams asked important questions of her generation of Americans:  What is the ethic that should drive social change?  How do we find a new common identity as Americans in this new society?  What institutions do we need to shape our communities?  These are questions we need to ask anew. 

References

“Jane Addams: A Foe of War and Need.” New York Times Obituary, May 22, 1935, retrieved June 12, 2012, from: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0906.html

Nobel Peace Prize 1931 Award Ceremony Speech, retrieved June 12, 2012, from: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/press.html

Addams, Jane.  Twenty Years at Hull House, New York: New American Library, 1961.

Knight, Louise W.  Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Schulte, Sarah.  “Jane Addams’ Hull House Closing Doors,” abclocal.go.com.  Retrieved on June 12, 2012, from: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8521173

Four Dimensions of Engagement

As we explore the future of higher education outreach in the United States, it is important to think about three distinct audiences for what we can consider traditional continuing education—provision of formal college courses to nontraditional, off-campus audiences.   These audiences have arisen around several factors, including:

·      The Obama administration has set a goal that 60 percent of all high school graduates will go on to higher education.  Right now, about 39 percent do.  So, to reach the goal, we will need to increase by almost double the number of high school graduates who go on to college.

·      The aging of the Baby Boom generation, which is distorting the age profile of the workforce, suggesting the need to focus both on preparing young people to enter the workforce and on re-educating mid-career workers for new jobs in the knowledge economy in order to meet workforce needs.

·      Expanding life expectancy, which is creating a cadre of retired workers who still have decades of active life ahead of them and who may need additional education to prepare them for active participation in the public and volunteer sectors.

            These three factors are among the key factors that are driving change in continuing higher education.    Increasingly, continuing education activities are tied to the long-term strategic interests of their institutions, as higher education tries to navigate the largely uncharted waters of radical social change.

Engaging Youth

The goal of increasing the percentage of high school graduates who go on to college must overcome a significant barrier:  most qualified high school graduates already go to college.  So, in order to reach the goal, we need to significantly increase the percentage of young people who graduate from high school prepared to enter college.   This is a critical social need that should drive a university’s engagement mission and strategy.   The question is:  How can a university engage with the secondary education community to increase the number of students eligible to move on to higher education?

Let me suggest several kinds of engagement that have strategic value:

·      Online Content for Curriculum Improvement  From the 1960s into the 1990s, public broadcasting stations around the nation devoted their daytime schedules to programs designed to be used by classroom teachers.  Several universities produced materials for in-school use.  At Penn State, for example, the University’s public television station collaborated with Education faculty to develop series like Investigative Science for Elementary Education, which featured demonstrations and explanations of different phenomena for grades 1-3, and What’s in the News, a weekly news analysis series for the middle grades that included essay contests for students.  Through the public television station, the University managed a consortium of school districts that used these and other programs and provided in-service training for students.   That service—and the national infrastructure that supported it—faded as technology changed in the 1990s.  However, today, universities can engage classroom teachers through online technology, from providing online content in the form of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to live webinars.  Regardless of the technology, the purpose is the same:  to ensure that all teachers have access to high quality content so that their students can qualify for higher education.

·      High School Courses  In the early days of distance education, it was not unusual for higher education institutions to directly offer high school courses to students through correspondence study.  A leader in this was the University of Nebraska, which licensed its courses to universities in other states, as well.  Today, several states have created online virtual high school programs to ensure that all students have access to the courses they will need in order to quality for higher education.   Universities can contribute directly to this movement by offering their own high school courses, either in collaboration with local school districts or by partnering with a statewide or national virtual high school system.

·      Dual Enrollment Courses  This level of engagement with the schools has high potential for serving high schools and students, but also for recruiting students and supporting local employers.  It involves universities delivering courses to high school students that meet high school graduation requirements and, at the same time, allow students to earn college credits, which students can apply toward degree programs following their high school graduation.   Students thus enter the university with some credits already on their transcripts.  These can be offered face-to-face in a high school or on campus or offered online.   Some states provide tuition support, through the local school district, for students in dual enrollment courses.

·      Youth Camps  Summer youth camps bring students of all ages to campus to learn more about an academic discipline.  Whether designed as residential camps or day camps, these programs introduce students to the campus environment and, often, give them an early exposure to different cultures.  In addition, they establish relationships that can be continued in more formal ways.

Engaging Mid-Career Workers

Engaging employers and industries is a traditional role of Continuing Education—one that is increasingly vital in order to help employers adjust to the new realities of the information society and to help communities make the match between employer needs and employee workforce skills.  

·      Workforce Training  From front-line skills to management and leadership, this is a kind of engagement that will be needed well into the future.  Online technology may be useful in embedding training in the worksite.  As manufacturing and other processes become increasingly distributed across state and national boundaries, technology allows universities to partner with other institutions to better distribute training and education across multiple sites.  Managing the non-academic aspects of these partnerships is a natural role for an Engagement unit.

·      Research and Technology Transfer  Increasingly, employers’ needs for access to new research and technology development information are multi-disciplinary.  Coordinating the engagement between a company and research faculty from multiple disciplines is, for some institutions, a new function.  For others, it is a function that has been traditionally housed in a central Continuing Education unit.

·      Accelerated Degree Programs  Where universities have a good engagement with the local community, they can also organize accelerated degree programs that prepare high school graduates for productive careers with key local industries.  Such programs might start with dual enrollment courses taken while students are in high school.  They would move into a degree program that includes summer internships in the local industry location, with these complemented by online courses.  The result would be a three-year baccalaureate that prepares people to enter the local professional workforce.

Engaging Older Citizens

            In The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin described a phenomenon of our generation: that both men and women are now living much longer than was the case in previous generations.  That was in the 1990s.  The average life expectancy of an American born in 2009 is 78.5 years.  Americans who were 65 in 2009 can expect to live to the age of 74.2.  Americans are living active, productive lives much longer into retirement than has ever been the case before.               Rifkin posited that this, in turn would stimulate a new “third act” in American life:  a post-retirement “career” in public service.   The idea is that these older adults, freed of work and family responsibilities, will find value in engaging in social sector activities, either as paid professionals or as volunteers.

            Preparing people for this third act could emerge as a critical dimension of Continuing Education over the next decade—and as a significant innovation for higher education as we adapt to new social realities and engage a society that has been potentially, dramatically changed by the information revolution.   One can imagine, for instance, that society would want to encourage the development of a social expectation that seniors would get involved in the delivery of social programs of all sorts—from serving as museum docents to assisting in soup kitchens, teaching GED and other programs, volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes, and working as professional staff in public agencies.  In addition to the obvious benefit of expanding services,  this would free up other jobs for younger workers, helping to ensure full employment among workers still striving to establishing themselves and raising their families.  The government might even decide to provide some financial benefits to seniors who engage in the social sectors by providing a tax credit or increasing their social security benefit, etc.

The Fourth Audience:  Engaging the Community

            There is one other audience that continuing education needs to better serve as we proceed through the second generation of the Information Revolution.   It is the community at large.  “Community” is hard to define in a global information society.  It used to mean a group of people who live interdependently in a defined geographic area.  The Information Age seems to be eliminating geography as a necessary factor in that definition—our geographic communities are now often very dependent on people in other places for their day-to-day well-being—but it remains a fact that our colleges and universities exist in physical communities and need to serve them.  The very fact that higher education has come to embody a variety of virtual communities—academic research communities that cross institutional and geographic boundaries, student bodies that attract people from all parts of the world, curricula that help students understand the new global inter-relationships, etc.—make our institutions an important resource for helping our communities adapt and position themselves to thrive in this new world.              From small farming villages to cities trying to shift from an industrial to knowledge economy, Pennsylvania communities are the fourth audience of continuing education.  We serve them through programs and services—from conferences to training programs to onsite consultation—that translate research into informed practice.   

           

Moving to Engagement

In all four areas, most institutions can say, “Yes, we are already doing a lot of this.  That’s true.  What we need, however, is to organize a multi-year strategic plan to show how our colleges and university continuing education offices will have a significant impact in each of these four dimensions.  It is no longer sufficient for continuing education to be opportunistic and short-term.  We need a strategy at the institutional level.   Perhaps part of that strategy is to re-contextualize continuing education in light of society’s new needs.   Engagement is the better term to describe a re-invented continuing education function.  It has been a while since the Kellogg Commission used that term in its Returning to Our Roots reports, and some institutions have adopted it already, but now we need to fully understand it as an institutional strategy and build a fresh Engagement infrastructure that will support all four dimensions described above and a new institutional strategy for engagement.  That is the leadership challenge.