Evaluation of the Annenberg/CPB Projects' New Pathways to a Degree

MAJOR FINDINGS

[[bjc: This is Western Cooperative's evaluation of the New Pathways to a Degree project. There's a local copy of a New Pathways Technology Report that describes how these seven institutions/systems provided the critical support structures for faculty and students, frequently facilitated by the use of technology. Here's]]

INTRODUCTION

The "New Pathways to a Degree" initiative was designed to encourage post-secondary institutions to develop degree programs that would serve students who might not otherwise complete a degree or even enroll in a higher education course. The seven projects selected for funding were diverse in scope and in the ways they approached this common goal. Each project developed in a unique environment, and each offers potentially valuable lessons. Based on the experiences of the New Pathways to a Degree projects, we have identified a number of factors that seem to contribute to the success of institutions interested in using new technologies to reach under-served students. Following are some observations on these mutual aspects of successful New Pathways to a Degree projects.

ATTENTION TO ADMINISTRATIVE DETAIL All the faculty and staff involved in the New Pathways projects found that a surprising number of administrative details had to be resolved, sometimes among groups that had never before needed to work together. As one evaluator put it, "the devil is in the details," as these examples show:

In West Virginia, students were working toward a degree that included classes from several universities. It was therefore necessary for the registrars at those universities to standardize all forms they required of the students. This small, but critical, coordinating detail became the responsibility of the West Virginia New Pathways project staff.

Staff of Oregon's multi-campus program found themselves dealing with another seemingly small problem that turned out to be important. In this project, real-time classes were supposed to be delivered simultaneously to different campuses. However, the participating campuses had different class time schedules, with one campus starting classes on the hour, while another's classes began at ten minutes past the hour.

The New Pathways staff at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), on the other hand, had to coordinate multiple functions within a single campus. As New Pathways students did not come to campus for classes, they were unable to wander from place to place to get appropriate financial aid materials, books, or reserved library materials. Project staff responded to this problem by establishing an ombudsman function that enabled New Pathways students to make a single telephone call to a person who could usually serve their needs but, if not, could direct them to the appropriate office. This service was so effective that it led some to remark that off-campus students got more personalized service than many on-campus students.

The quality all these examples have in common is the staffs' commitment to ensuring service to students by paying unusual attention to details. In fact, the one group that did not include in its planning any capacity to handle such details found its project mired in them. It is interesting that this was the only New Pathways project that originated with a faculty group. When they designed their ambitious project, the faculty at the College of St. Catherine overlooked the critical administrative details. The consequence, noted by the evaluator, was that faculty found themselves dealing with the bookstore, library, and other support services for the students, and consequently were unable to devote as much time as they had planned on course design. As a result they did not accomplish as much as they had originally anticipated.

A COMMITMENT TO UNDER-SERVED STUDENTS All these projects sought to serve students who would otherwise have limited access to higher education. In some projects these under-served students were people in rural areas, while in others they were urban students whose time constraints prevented them from coming to a campus. In one project, the constraints were, instead, cultural. The Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) project was designed to reach into inner-city neighborhoods in which attending college is unusual. The New Pathways planners' strategy was to develop electronically-equipped learning centers within the community, which enabled IUPUI to provide both classes and learning support services at a distance. Students who might have been uncomfortable attending classes on a campus were served through these community learning centers. Although the classes initially offered did not draw large enrollments, the level of rigor of the courses selected provided the credibility necessary to enable the less-than- convinced faculty to embrace the project so it could continue and eventually reach more students. The Education Network of Maine project planners developed learning centers in remote areas of the state and linked them to the campus using a microwaved video signal. The learning centers, some of which were on islands off the coast, provided the local support these students needed. Electronic links were used not only for delivering classroom lectures, but were also used for student-to-student interactions among these isolated learners. Successful projects found a way to capitalize on the differences in students' approaches that emerged in these distance learning projects. New Pathways students seemed to perform as well as on-campus students, but in some respects they tended to "use the class" in different ways than a traditional undergraduate might:

In projects that used real-time links to remote sites (Education Network of Maine, West Virginia University, Oregon State System of Higher Education), the "outsiders" changed the on-campus class dynamic. The remote students were usually older and approached the class in a more business-like manner. The questions they asked moved the discussions in new directions and were usually reported to be quite stimulating.

The remote students gathered in off-campus sites to participate in the live video classes tended to form learning communities. In some cases the community was restricted to students physically present at the local site, while in other cases links were forged with students in the same profession who lived in other parts of the state. In one nursing class in Oregon, for example, students developed a personal statewide network of colleagues with whom they could consult on cases.

Projects that succeeded were also those that found a way to identify and reach under-served students who were, in a sense, self-selected in terms of a willingness to use mediated tools to participate in the classes. These students seemed to be highly motivated and to appreciate the opportunity to take classes without having to travel or move to a campus.

STRONG FACULTY INVOLVEMENT Institutions with successful New Pathways projects sought strong faculty as instructors in their courses. In fact, nearly 50 percent of all projects' faculty had been tenured for an average of ten years. Such faculty lend important credibility for technologically mediated learning projects. As the evaluator of the RIT project points out, RIT's project blossomed because of early support and involvement from highly regarded faculty members who provided positive models for their peers. In addition to seeking participation from faculty leaders, institutions that received a positive response from faculty were those that gave faculty genuine control over their involvement. Projects in which instructors were allowed to choose the electronic tools best suited to their individual style and pedagogical designs within administrative parameters, like enrollment levels, had more satisfied faculty than those that required everyone to use the same technology. In successful projects, faculty became part of a team responsible for developing a course. For example, faculty at Northern Virginia Community College were the academic leaders of a team that also included experts in technology, instructional design, and student services. Creative pedagogical designs that fit the demands of the subject matter and the financial resources of an academic department resulted from giving faculty strong leadership roles. At IUPUI, for example, each of the five courses developed as part of the New Pathways project was designed at the departmental level. Each course was based on a different model that served the particular needs of a specific discipline. Another factor that seemed to influence faculty members' feelings about their experiences was their institution's reward structure. Traditional university reward structures emphasize scholarship rather than teaching, and they do not recognize increased time spent on course development and student interaction. Some university-based New Pathways projects were therefore specifically designed either to reward faculty directly for their increased efforts or to attract senior faculty for which this was less of an issue. The community college-based New Pathways projects had less of a problem with this issue, as teaching is considered the primary activity for all faculty. Some comments from the faculty express the importance of acknowledging the need for more effort in teaching students who do not come to a campus: *...One becomes an around-the-clock professor. Messages come to you at all times. . .

The whole process has been energy-consuming for me. It is too much work! To fully utilize the available technology one must spend countless hours perfecting technique and learning how to utilize technology.

Few of the institutional leaders seemed to fully recognize the degree to which the role of the faculty member may change when he or she begins teaching students who never come to a campus. The instructor becomes part of a team that designs, delivers, and supports the course. In such an environment, the instructor needs and must get more support, but he or she also gives up some autonomy.

Despite the difficulties that some instructors faced as they moved into electronically mediated teaching, many found the experience very rewarding. Comments from participants in New Pathways projects reveal that many instructors consider themselves better teachers for having to rethink how and what they communicate to their students. Some are then able to apply the techniques they learned in their electronic teaching environments to their face-to-face classes:

"It has enhanced my teaching capabilities, including course preparation, and lends clarity to my assignments to students."

"The distance has caused me to be more effective in communicating and more objective in assessing student performance."

OPENNESS TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES

All the New Pathways projects helped to demonstrate that one can successfully teach students who may never be seen face-to-face. While the faculty in these projects used different tools, both they and their students felt that they successfully overcame this lack of in-person contact. With the possible exception of the live video links (either one-way video/two-way audio or two-way video), students reported feeling that they received individualized attention from their instructors.

One faculty member who was using electronic mail to communicate with her students said the dialogue of teaching and learning was enhanced when she could review and respond to her students' work on computer rather than waiting for the next class meeting.
Another instructor remarked, "The electronic environment has the potential to eliminate distracters, 'bad days,' and all factors extraneous to the instructional process--to strip away everything except the teacher, the learner, and the content."

One of the surprises that emerged from observing these projects was the strong approval of electronic mail as a communications tool. Because electronic mail is relatively complex (computer, modem, telephone line access, computer skills, keyboard skills, and writing skills), we did not expect it to be as widely accepted as those technologies that required only a telephone (audio-conferencing or voice-mail). While these latter technologies were regarded as effective tools, the asynchronous aspect of the communication and the ability to think through, see, and revise a response before sending it seemed to have played a part in the acceptance of e-mail. In our survey of the students who used e-mail to interact with their instructor and other students, over 80 percent reported that the quality of their interactions over e-mail was "at least as good as" or "better than" they had experienced in face-to-face classes. Almost 75 percent of the students using e-mail said they enjoyed it and would either seek out another chance to use it or consider another class in which it was used. Faculty accepted e-mail as well, with about 80 percent reporting that they enjoyed it. Ninety percent of those using e-mail thought the quality of this form of mediated interaction was at least as good as they experienced in their face-to-face classes. Some faculty reported that these mediated discussions were of a higher quality than in more traditionally taught classes. Although not all faculty agreed, the following comments were typical of those regarding e-mail:

"I have greater awareness of the individual student and his/her individual learning styles."
"Quality--more in-depth, one-on-one. . . This [e-mail] does force an instructor to address the individual differences. It is more obvious that learners are at all different levels of achievement. . . Electronic group interaction can never replace the face-to-face situation."

Institutions need to recognize that using electronic tools as the primary means of communication in a teaching/learning environment does change the whole process. When asked to compare the class dynamics of the mediated class with a more traditional face-to-face class, one faculty member emphatically remarked that there was no comparison. It was a totally different experience and little could be gained by trying to compare the two for either the student or the instructor. Another faculty member characterized the new role of the instructor as changing from an information/concept provider to becoming a teacher who put greater emphasis on working with students to use the information and technology.

SUPPORT FROM THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE INSTITUTION One of the easiest observations to make about these projects is the incredible level of commitment needed by the individuals who made them work. The individuals whose efforts were necessary to these projects frequently came from different parts of the college or university. Consequently it was critical that the presidents and chancellors supported these efforts. In some cases that was the only position to which all the players eventually reported. As has already been mentioned, faculty members relied on technicians, student services personnel, and others with whom they normally would not come into contact. None of this coordination was easy and all those who worked on these projects put forth enormous effort at each stage. The ability to use intervention from above when necessary was useful in some cases. Several of the administrative participants recognized the support and leadership from their institution's chief executive officers as a serious motivating factor at those moments when the "challenges" seemed overwhelming. Conclusions Several New Pathways to a Degree projects have gone beyond their initially defined scope. The Annenberg/CPB Project recognition allowed many of them to attract additional funding and other types of support. As a result of their New Pathways projects, Northern Virginia Community College and the West Virginia consortium of universities have been formally recognized by their states as key players in the statewide provision of degree programs to rural areas. In Oregon, the State System of Higher Education has developed a new position to coordinate statewide activities in classes linked electronically. The University of Maine at Augusta now organizes an annual meeting for faculty teaching students electronically. Another example of the extended reach of the Annenberg/CPB Projects' initial funding is the National Science Foundation's recent support for a national meeting for teachers of lab sciences. An instructor of IUPUI's chemistry take-home class hosted that meeting which has inspired other science faculty to try teaching their lab courses to students who might not come to a campus. In 1994 there is much more emphasis on electronic learning tools than in 1991 when the New Pathways projects were initiated. The United States' federal administration is now stressing an information highway that will serve many needs, with education a purpose. As pioneers in the effort to use technology to deliver degree programs to new populations of learners, the New Pathways projects and their stories can help other educators understand what can be accomplished with technology and what is necessary to open the academy in the context of this new environment.

The complete report of the evaluation of Annenberg/CPB Projects' New Pathways to a Degree is published in two companion volumes available from WICHE Publications Office, PO Drawer "P", Boulder, CO 80301-9752, voice: 303/541-0290, fax: 303/541-0291.

_NEW PATHWAYS TO A DEGREE: TECHNOLOGY OPENS THE COLLEGE_ summarizes the evaluators' reports of the seven projects and the survey of the New Pathways faculty and students.

_ SEVEN TECHNOLOGY STORIES: NEW PATHWAYS TO A DEGREE_ is a collection of the evaluators' interpretations of the stories behind each project. In these "stories" the evaluators describe the essential and unique aspects of each project.

Sally M. Johnstone Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications Boulder, Colorado 1994 Internet: Sally.Johnstone@Colorado.Edu

Modification date: March 07, 2004

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