Developing a Case Study of a Successful DE Program

Distance education seems to most of us to be a relatively new thing and is currently most commonly thought of as synonymous with online learning. However, the Open University of the U.K. (OU) has been providing distance education courses in a variety of formats since its inception in 1969.  The OU accepted its first 25,000 students, representing people from all walks of life, in 1971. Since then, they have graduated more than 200,000 students and the OU has become a model for distance learning, online learning, and virtual or open universities. Because of its prominence at the format of distance and online learning, I would like to profile the OU. The OU has been a leader in distance education and online learning during its 40-year history and much of what we know about what works (and doesn’t) in the field of online education has been identified through studies at the OU. Developing a knowledge and understanding of this institution is to develop one’s knowledge of the history of the field and the model that set the bar for everyone else.

As I explore more into the history of the OU and continue my studies of distance and online learning in countries outside the United States, I think that developing wiki or web site that could serve as a directory for such programs would be the most effective way to share what I’ve learned with others. This would contain basic information about the program with links and contact information, a description of the programs and students of the program, a brief history of the program, and some key positives/negatives about each program. This is where I would showcase my own case study of a successful distance education program and its leaders.

To gather this information, the program’s own sites would be the primary source of information with supporting information gathered from journal articles, other websites and forums, and emailed interview questions to representatives of the program. Gathering information and adding it to the wiki/web page for the case study would take two to three weeks.

Towards a Definition of Leadership in Distance Education

What is leadership? It is most commonly assumed that it means "being the boss" or being the person at the top responsible for making decisions. This is an outdated paradigm. Karakas (2007) suggests that leaders should be innovators who embrace the talents and insights of all of the stakeholders in an organization. Leadership and management are too often confused leading to emphasis on short-term problems and solutions rather than long-term visions and goals. A good leader needs the courage, creativity, flexibility, and commitment to help shape a clear organizational vision or goal and the compassion and communication skills to foster a sense of community within the organization that inspires stakeholders to work collaboratively towards that goal. Gone are the iron-fisted dictator and the lonely CEO (or principal) sitting in a top-floor office handing down directives from above. Leaders in our new age need to be more like facilitators of the flow of information and communication between members of the organization, directed the flow of work-product.  (Karakas, 2007)

How does this apply to education? Or distance education? According to Davis (2008), all learning systems should be developed with the vantage points of the needs of the intended students and the intended learning outcomes in mind.  Traditionally, schools have been organizations with the common purpose of educating the children of a community using an agreed upon curriculum by teachers working largely in the isolation of their single classrooms. While brick-and-mortar schools have shifted to more cooperative learning and collaborative models, teachers in virtual schools and in other online course settings are still working in isolation, often at a greater transactional distance from their students, let alone their peer teachers. To be an effective leader in a virtual school environment, a principal would need a clear vision of how to channel information flow and to encourage communication and a sense of community within the members of the virtual school, both teachers and students.

Leaders in virtual schools and other online distance education settings are faced with additional challenges and must consider curriculum development, hiring and maintaining qualified teachers and supporting them with appropriate professional development, student recruitment and assessment, and developing and maintaining technology infrastructure. (Watson & Gemin, 2009) In a traditional school, these are issues that would be addressed by leaders in different district-level departments, not by a single administrator. In a virtual school, a leader may need the skills to understand each of these components and issues associated with each in order to develop and maintain a team to implement and manage them all. In this kind of setting, the principal is as much IT manager as staff manager as student services coordinator.  Even more than other administrators, they need to keep current to plan for the impact of rapidly changing technologies and trends in both brick-and-mortar and online education.

“Ensuring quality in a fast-growing enterprise like online learning is like upgrading the engine on a jetliner while it is in flight,” says Mickey Revenaugh, Vice President for State Relations at Connections Academy. “It’s an enormous challenge —but one that virtual program managers must embrace wholeheartedly. If we as online educators don’t do all we can voluntarily to ensure that we have every possible quality system in place, we can be certain that policy-makers and regulators will attempt to do the job for us.” (Watson & Gemin, 2009, p.23)

References:

Davis, A., Little, P. & Stewart, B. (2008). DEVELOPING AN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ONLINE LEARNING. In T. Anderson (Ed.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 2^nd ed. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca Press. http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/second_edition.html

Karakas, F. (2007). The Twenty-First Century Leader: Social Artist, Spiritual Visionary, and Cultural Innovator. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, March/April 2007, 44-50. http://ssrn.com/abstract=976762 

Watson, J. & Gemin, B. (2009). Management and Operations of Online Programs: Ensuring Quality and Accountability. Vienna, VA: International Association for K-12 Online Learning. http://inacol.org/resources/promisingpractices/index.php  

(DELM 1)