Guest Editor's Introduction

Introduction

The idea for this special issue of the Journal of General Education evolved from discussions with former JGE Editor James L. Ratcliff, who served on the steering committee for the Innovations in Distance Education (IDE) project. The IDE project was funded in large part by the AT&T Foundation and administered and led by The Pennsylvania State University’s Outreach and Cooperative Extension organization. The project’s outcomes depended on contributions not only from Penn State, but also from the 10 other large research institutions belonging to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)—or “Big Ten”—and eight smaller Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

As manager of the IDE project, I am pleased to serve as guest editor of this special Journal issue. The project’s exposure in the Journal provides an opportunity for the participants to share some of its lessons and outcomes with other members of the higher education community. A description of the IDE project’s goals, components, procedures, and end-products sets the stage for the articles included in this publication. This special issue highlights the common interests of those committed to enhancing general education through exemplary and innovative teaching, and those attempting to bring distance education into the mainstream of higher education.

What is Distance Education?

The answer may seem obvious, but even a cursory review of the literature in this rapidly evolving area suggests that different definitions of distance education abound. The definition used by those involved in the IDE project most closely matches the one in the American Council on Education’s (ACE) Guiding Principles for Distance Learning, which was designed to guide institutional practice at the program level and was developed in cooperation with the Alliance for Nontraditional Degree Programs (American Council on Education, 1996). As the ACE report notes, the document is written for both educators and trainers and is not limited to those in traditional education. Therefore, the authors chose to use the terms “learners” and “learning” rather than “students” and “teaching” to convey the intended range of participants. Although the contributors to this issue do not consistently use the terms preferred by ACE, those of us who focus on providing education to nontraditional students—as is often the case in distance education—find these terms highly appropriate. Ultimately, according to the ACE definition, distance learning/education is a system and a process that connects learners with distributed learning resources, and it is characterized by a separation of place or time or both between instructor and learner, between learners, between learners and learning resources, or all three. Interaction in distance education is conducted through one or more media that are not necessarily electronic.

Background of the Innovations in Distance Education Project

IDE was launched in 1995. This major initiative’s purpose was to help institutions of higher education create a supportive culture in which the possibilities of distance education might be more fully realized. There were two overarching goals for this 3-year undertaking, each represented by one of the two major project components: the Institutional Policy Initiative and the Faculty Development Initiative. The primary goal of the Institutional Policy Initiative was to identify and address institutional barriers so that distance education might flourish within institutions of higher education. The primary goal of the Faculty Development Initiative was to develop a set of principles and practices that would guide the work of faculty in developing quality distance education.

Although the Faculty Development Initiative is this special issue’s focus, a description of the Institutional Policy component of the IDE project is included in this introduction to help explain the overall purpose of the project and the broader context within which the Faculty Development Initiative was undertaken. Information about the Institutional Policy Initiative may also be of interest to the reader concerned about how institutional policies and procedures impact the instructional activities carried out by faculty, particularly as they apply to distance education.

The Institutional Policy Initiative

A series of three invitational symposia, which brought together leaders concerned with the role of distance education within higher education, achieved the goals of the policy initiative. Participants included...