A-HEC: You have been closely aligned with distance learning throughout your career. What significant changes have you noted in online learning during the past two decades? What notable innovations have led to its success? And what obstacles do you believe have limited its growth?

PP: I’ve spent the largest part of my career working in institutions where their whole focus is on the adult learner rather than have that be a marginal focus. I would say that one of the characteristics of success is that you have to have that institutional alignment and be willing to invest in those programs in order to give them integrity. Using my pots and pans analogy, Walden started with pots, what I call plain old telephone service and the U.S. mail, and always worked with whatever technology was available at the time. But we began at a distance. We didn’t have something else that we were doing first and then had to figure out how to do something else. The ‘pans’ represents some of the “pretty amazing new stuff”. We were, for example, early to market with a whole online master’s degree program in education in the early 90s.

We actually are not leading edge in our technology. We are not out there podcasting or doing some of the other things that are very trendy at the moment. In part, with our access mission, we need to make sure that all of our learners have access to the technology we’re using. I don’t think that razzle dazzle technology is one of the secrets to success. I think that consistency and clarity and academic integrity are much more integral success indicators. A lot of institutions, in order to get into the online business, rather than have a strategy, used an early adopter methodology where they would do whatever it was that students wanted to do or faculty were willing to do. There have been a lot of conversations in the last year about facilitating success in distance education, and it always seems to comes back to governance issues and alignment with mission which is really apart from what learning platform you choose or toolkit you provide to your students.

I think that the largest barrier to success in distance learning is slowly being deconstructed and that is public opinion, the notion that distance education is less quality. It is a war that I would almost declare won. And I think a lot of the research that was done in the late 90s, the ‘no significant difference’ research, some of the work that the Sloan Foundation and others have done, has really helped in turning public opinion.

A-HEC: One obstacle that Walden has probably not experienced is the reluctance on the part of faculty to adopt online learning as a viable alternative. At traditional institutions, faculty are reluctant to use technology because they are intimidated by it and even fear it may ultimately replace them in the classroom.

PP: I agree with that observation, which is why it is important to have an institutional strategy and governance in place. Faculty opinion within the academy is a huge barrier because all those folks are concerned or fearful of technology and the huge expansion that distance learning makes possible. Expansion and access goes counter inthe academic mind to what defines quality, which is exclusion and elitism, rather than inclusion and broad access.

Copyright 2006 Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness.