Faculty dinner seminars will help launch the discussion
In the near future, Brown faculty members will need to determine what role they and the University will play in the rapidly expanding world of distance learning.
That was a key message presented at the April 4 faculty meeting by Provost Kathryn Spoehr, who announced that faculty dinner seminars April 24 and May 2 would help launch the discussion
Spoehr and others from Brown have met with representatives of Global Education Network (GEN), a new for-profit company created to offer "brand-name courses over the Internet," she said. She emphasized several times that no contract has been signed, and that Brown as well as GEN are exploring a number of options.
GEN and others believe there is a growing market for what distance education could offer. Customers include undergraduates who want to take a course not offered at their own institution, alumni who are interested in lifelong learning, and talented high school students seeking advanced placement courses.
However, establishing and maintaining distance education programs can be costly. That's what makes the GEN offer particularly attractive, Spoehr noted. Although much remains to be discussed, GEN is offering to finance a portion of an institution's participation, would do much of the course preparation, and would secure copyrights. In exchange, GEN seeks faculty members who would create courses bearing the hallmark of the participating institution. In Brown's case, a faculty member would agree to have his or her lectures taped, would supply materials to GEN, and would have signoff authority. Profit would be split among GEN, the faculty member and Brown using as-yet undetermined licensing agreement.
The concept "is exciting from my point of view," Spoehr said. By partnering with GEN now rather than later, "it gives Brown control over the look and feel of the whole system" and offers Brown "a chance to shape the way distance education is accomplished," she said.
Online education is not new at Brown. The Office of Alumni Relations at one point offered an online non-credit course, and several faculty members maintain Web pages for components of their courses. Students, of course, are well-versed in asynchronous learning on the Internet.
Professor Ken Miller, however, and his Biology 20 course have been Brown's first test of GEN's user interface. "Those of us who have seen it were favorably impressed," Spoehr said.
Faculty members raised a number of concerns at the meeting. Among them: