Penn State Intercom......February 1, 2001

Four universities form
alliance for distance education

Celena E. Kusch
Outreach Communications

Four major universities with a tradition of leadership in distance education have formed an alliance to facilitate development of their online distance learning capabilities.

The University of California, Berkeley, University Extension; Penn State's World Campus; the University of Washington; and the University of Wisconsin's Learning Innovations have agreed to work together to advance online learning practices at their institutions. Together, the institutions offer 500 online distance education courses in a broad range of curricula.

The alliance will focus initially on four areas: benchmarking institutional practices and standards, assessing opportunities from the private sector, joint sales efforts and exploring opportunities for collaborative program development. The four universities saw a need to analyze and explore the best practices of providing online educational programs at a university level. Groups from these institutions are being formed to study, discuss, compare and disseminate standards and best practices. They expect the results to be of immediate use to guide their own strategic planning for this educational delivery mode, as well as to raise the bar for online education and training in general.

"This alliance represents four institutions that have made a significant commitment to online distance education," said Gary Matkin, dean of continuing education at the University of California, Irvine. Matkin, formerly associate dean of Extension at the University of California, Berkeley, was responsible for initiating the idea of an alliance. "Working together, we can have a greater impact on the practice of online learning, helping to evolve norms of practice that can guide the development of the field." Matkin will continue to convene the alliance in his new position at UC Irvine.

One stimulus for the creation of the alliance was a need to more effectively assess the value of the many commercial ventures that have arisen around the rapidly developing online learning industry. David Szatmary, vice provost of educational outreach at the University of Washington, reports that "the explosion of activity in the online learning field has led to e-commerce and service-related businesses, which want to work with us. Through the alliance, our institutions can make better decisions about how best to assess and collaborate with these for-profits."

Online learning has expanded the market for online programs internationally and placed a new emphasis on collaborative marketing efforts.

"Most of us have great marketing plans for our regions, but we need to work together and with corporate partners to expand our efforts globally," said Michael Offerman, dean of continuing education and executive director of learning innovations at the University of Wisconsin. "By this partnership, we maximize our efforts to reach greater populations for our collective programs."

The alliance had an inaugural meeting in Berkeley in December, beginning an ongoing benchmarking relationship in the areas of marketing, instructional design and technology. The benchmarking initiative will be expanded to include student services and academic program development.

"These are functions that are absolutely critical to the long-term success of online distance education," notes Mary Beth Almeda, assistant dean, online and distance education at the University of California, Berkeley, Extension, who was host for the initial meeting. "In the coming months, our staff leaders in these areas will begin to work as professional communities to establish norms of practice that will guide our institutions and, we anticipate, others in the future."

The four institutions also will explore opportunities to share academic resources to offer collaborative online distance education programs nationally and internationally.

"This is a more complex and long-term goal than some of the other issues that brought us together," notes Gary Miller, associate vice president for distance education at Penn State and executive director of the World Campus. "However, we all are aware that our institutions each have unique and sometimes complementary academic resources. We also are sensitive to the fact that this is an increasingly competitive environment and that appropriate institutional collaboration can help give us a competitive advantage, especially in the international arena. The opportunities to collaborate will arise naturally as we work together."

Currently, the group is limiting participation to the initial institutions.

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