Kathy Cannon's List: Distance Education Models and Management

• the PAF   is a constructive means for thinking about and managing distance   education programs and courses
• these seven areas are strategic management decision zones.
• • Use this framework to outline roles / positions in DL operation

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• Commuter-serving urban universities can’t match the marketing muscle of faster-growing, for-profit, online colleges. What they can try to do is parlay stronger local brands, cheaper tuition, and blended programs that shift a lot of class time online into an appealing package for area adults. The kind of adults who might value coming to campus periodically but struggle to do it three times a week.

• Centralizing the operation is the right way as it provides a uniform level of faculty support, ensures that all courses going out under the UI name meet a minimum academic quality standard, that all faculty are trained and mentored equally, that the course content has embedded within it the right mix of different types of content as fits the subject matter, etc. It does this with the efficiency that only a single business unit can develop.
• The resource rich departments will likely turn their backs on the rest of the institution and forge their own way.
• How can the smaller departments be sure that the institution’s enrollment marketing and admissions units are adequately promoting their brand and their offerings?
• really just a marketing unit that was slowly able to build up the other needed components. So, to say it was a failure is misleading. In my experience it is likely that it was sold with much fanfare and given a mandate that it was not given the proper authority to implement fully

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• constraints on resources, uncertainties about intellectual property policy, and inadequacy of faculty reward systems

• "This new report reinforces that effective teachers need to incorporate digital content into everyday classes and consider open-source learning management systems, which have proven cost effective in school districts and colleges nationwide," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a statement released to coincide with the publication of the report. "We must take advantage of this historic opportunity to use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to bring broadband access and online learning to more communities."
• At the same time, good teachers can utilize new technology to accelerate learning and provide extended learning opportunities for students
• only five controlled studies (with seven contrasts between online and face to face environments) involved K-12 students
• the results are for the most part based on studies in other settings, such as in medical, career, military training, and higher education
• "Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium.
• At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction." (Emphasis was not added.)
• The analysis was conducted by the Center for Technology in Learning.

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• But Mr. Edley prefers to focus on more successful ventures like Britain’s Open University and the for-profit University of Phoenix.
• Online learning, he concludes, could save the California dream of a top-notch education for all. The best offense in a crisis, he concludes, “is often innovation.”