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A-HEC: How do you anticipate distance learning will evolve during the next five to 10 years?
PP: As I said, I think we’ve won the war on public opinion as to whether distance learning is inferior to traditional classroom learning, and I think you will continue to see expansion of the system. I’m not a very good technological guru so I have a hard time imagining the technologies that we will be using in the coming years. However, I think the technologies will increasingly facilitate easier access to learning through distance education. I think that continued ease of access will facilitate much more access to a global learning community. I believe the system will be changed more through increasing globalization, and certainly Walden, as part of an international education company, plans to be at the forefront of that movement. In terms of the Walden mission, we actually look at the opportunities that distance education will bring forward for increasing global understanding and facilitating a very different kind of global environment. This brings new meaning to social change for us.
A-HEC: For traditional institutions, what advice would you offer them as they think about expanding their programs online and making more of their courses available through distance learning?
PP: I guess my advice would be to make sure that what they are doing is strategically aligned with the mission of their organization, to make sure they are acting strategically and not just expediently. They need to be certain about what it is they are trying to accomplish. And once it becomes strategic, then it aligns with the governance systems, with their institutional investment system, with their academic strengths. All of those things give a program integrity. I’ve been a member for decades of the University Continuing Education Association and the Association for Continuing Higher Education. On some level, their meetings are nothing more than opportunities for continuing higher educators to get together and whine about how they are so marginalized in their institutions and how nobody appreciates them. These are the very people nationally, by and large, who are running the distance education programs and the programs for adult learners. My advice has been to stop whining about it. Start working effectively within your institutions to help build strategy around what it is you are doing.
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