| Editor: Richard M. Dougherty, University of Michigan, Ann P. Dougherty
Contributing Editors: Mignon Adams, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia; Steve Marquardt, South Dakota State University; William Miller, Florida Atlantic University; Maureen Pastine, Temple University |
| Vol. 20, No. 3 | January 2000 |
The Virtual University: Lessons for the Mainstream
by Edward D. Garten
A new class of higher education institution has emerged over the last decade—the virtual university. These academic programs and the virtual libraries that they have created vary widely in structure and sophistication. Librarians affiliated with more traditional public or private residential universities cannot close their eyes in the hope that virtual universities with their virtual libraries will go away. Nor should large research libraries consider themselves immune to the implications of this accelerating development in higher education. The notion of students earning certificates and degrees without ever setting foot on a physical campus (or entering one of our libraries) has captured the imagination of entrepreneurs and Wall Street investors. This trend will only continue and grow.
Recent Developments
In Fall 1998 I chaired the team that recommended Jones International University for accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA). Jones International, which offers its courses and academic degree programs exclusively over the Internet, became the first degree-granting virtual university to win accreditation. Following the accreditation decision I was not surprised by the outcry from some quarters. I had heard some of the same alarm from faculty and librarians a few years earlier when I’d led the team that reaffirmed accreditation for the University of Phoenix Online degree program based in San Francisco. The affirmative accreditation decision of Jones International sparked a rapid response from the American Association of University Professors. AAUP’s chair of its Committee on Accrediting of Colleges and Universities noted concern with accrediting agencies being willing to grant any institution accreditation, regardless of what kind of standards exist for educational quality. He noted—without firsthand knowledge of facts to the contrary—that Jones International University lacked, among other functions, a library.1
While the accreditation of Jones International made headlines in major newspapers and was featured twice in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that reporting only served to focus further debate on the emergence of a new class of educational provider. To note only a few recent developments in the field:
- The University of Nebraska at Lincoln recently has created a for-profit company to tap into what many view as a lucrative market: distance delivery of secondary education. In the wake of the Columbine High School tragedy some educational futurists have predicted that this market in particular may grow dramatically.
- Columbia University has announced a company that will provide online university courses and other educational products.
- Harcourt, moving beyond textbook sales, recently announced plans to open a for-profit university. The president of the company’s new division, to be called Harcourt Learning Direct, noted: “The idea is to offer full degrees up to the master’s level.”
- The Western Governors’ University is emerging as a prominent force. Under its virtual roof, WGU has brought together courses offered by institutions in 17 states.
The list of virtual universities (or physical universities with substantial virtual programs) grows. Included on any list would be such institutional or corporate names as The Apollo Group (the parent of the University of Phoenix with over 55,000 students), ERASMUS Virtual University, Florida’s Gulf Coast University, Motorola, Inc., Magellan University, Spectrum Virtual University, and Minnesota’s Virtual University. Motorola alone estimates that over 20 percent of its 100,000 students now come from outside the company.
Yet, critics of the virtual learning environment continue to be vocal. Recently, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) ran an ad in The Chronicle that employed the classic Fr. Guido Sarducci Saturday Night Live skit, “The 5 Minute University.” The ad asked the question: “Is it about to become a reality?” AFT challenges that many virtual university marketing campaigns “suggest it’s anachronistic for students to spend time in the classroom and library, interacting with professors and fellow students, moving past competencies to understanding, perspective and wisdom.”2 Other observers, while suggesting that virtual education has serious limitations, have contended that if traditional academics only would rectify the educational deficiencies on their own campuses they might feel far less threatened by the virtual ones. Critics aside, estimates suggest that nearly half of the U.S. population engages in some form of part-time education or training at any given time with part-time and virtual university enrollments growing three times faster than full-time enrollments in residential colleges and universities.
The Shift to Online Learning:Is a Library in the Equation?
Within the next five years many more undergraduate students will have sufficient access to computing. This will allow easier access to the growing wealth of Internet-based courses and degree programs. Today’s robust, interactive networks hold a promise and allure that universities, governments, and corporations and certainly students are responding to in unprecedented ways.3 These asynchronous learning networks, typically central to virtual universities, offer learners the capability to learn anywhere, anytime. Contemporary implementation of these online academic programs use conferencing software, online reading materials, and offer some form of virtual library. Virtual universities have been on the leading edges of these developments.
“If traditional
academics would rectify the
educational deficiencies on their own campuses,
they might feel far less threatened
by the virtual ones.”While exciting to many, these developments are troubling to others. Even a cursory review of the literature surrounding the virtual university will find libraries unevenly discussed, if they are discussed at all. In reality, part of the current revolution in higher education entails the commoditization of the educational function of the university. Courses, especially those offered by virtual universities, often have been transformed into courseware and frequently developed by instructional designers who don’t actually teach the courses. As David Noble has contended, the activity of instruction itself has been transformed into commercially viable proprietary products that can be owned and traded on the educational market.4
Few Courses Reveal Demanding Reading Lists. The manner in which many virtual universities view access to library resources is irksome to some librarians as well. In Fr. Guido Sarducci’s “5 Minute University, ”Spanish was reduced to the phrases “como esta usted” and “muy bien;” economics was summed up as “supply and demand;” and theology was capsulized as “God is everywhere.” Do virtual universities offer students the “5 Minute Library” as well?
My own experience in assessing programs offered by virtual universities suggests that few courses reveal demanding reading lists or require extensive library research. More likely than not, most required readings for virtual courses are contained in institutionally assembled course packs. The library coordinator for a major virtual graduate university that has an excellent virtual library recently observed with me that “we have again and again encouraged students to explore the wonderful databases available to them, but more and more the siren call of the few full-text databases is drowning out all other messages. If the full text database is available from a distance will they ever make the effort to search the others and go after the articles or papers?” It would seem that most assignments requiring more in-depth information sources can be met more quickly and efficiently via full-text databases or document delivery services afforded through virtual universities’ Web-based electronic libraries.
Must we resolve ourselves to the reality that there has been a fundamental shift in the minds of many students (particularly busy professional working adults and more than a few traditional age undergrads) relative to the importance of a library in their credentialing? In last year’s Institute for Higher Education Policy study, What’s the Difference? the question was raised as to whether distance learning research has paid too little attention to the limitations of virtual libraries, avoiding all together the issue of whether these limitations constrict the academic direction of courses. Clearly this is one question that needs further exploration.
An Opportunity to Rethink
Library Service Issues. But academics and librarians who criticize virtual programs on this point may be judging harshly. To their credit, virtual universities and their evolving virtual libraries offer more mainstream universities and their libraries an opportunity to rethink a number of library service issues. In all fairness we need to admit that many of our more traditional, residential universities offer far too many courses where demanding reading lists and extensive research expectations have been replaced with either short reading lists, course packs, and minimal—if any—research paper requirements. Far too many librarians are seeing far too many students interested only in “good enough” information to satisfy the minimal expectations of their courses. The cynic may suggest that there is less that separates us from the virtual university than we might think given that the preponderant number of courses at our more traditional universities are now largely careerist in nature.
In most virtual learning environments a “library” is part of the pedagogical equation but these libraries remain limited. In a few instances those who lead virtual universities have had to be prompted by the accreditation bodies, as well as their own students, before they offered more sophisticated library resources. Most, however, early in their histories saw the need to develop alternative approaches through which to access and make library resources available to their students. But as Walt Crawford recently noted, virtual libraries may make sense in special circumstances—and often do—but, given their limitations, most good library service still requires physical libraries.
Models of Practice
Contrary to what some may think, none of the regional accreditation agencies mandate the form that either physical or virtual libraries must take. The NCACS simply offers guidelines related to “good practice” in the provision of library information resources, and in its Guidelines for Distance Education says only that institutions must ensure that students have access to and can effectively use appropriate library resources. For its certification of international, transnational degree programs, the Global Alliance for Transnational Education says only that provider institutions must ensure that an adequate learning environment and resources for the transnational courses are made available to students.
My own experience with several models of the virtual university leads me to believe that there are lessons that mainstream universities and their libraries can learn from virtual universities. Here are a few models to consider.
- Jones International University (http://www.jonesinternational.edu) provides a good example of what may be called a true virtual university: it is a total online learning environment. At present Jones offers only the B.A. and the M.A. in Business Communications. While having only a few hundred students at the present time, enrollments are expected to rise dramatically as new degree programs are implemented. JIU’s version of the virtual library, its e-global library ™, has succeeded in bringing together online, the traditional library elements of bibliographic instruction, tailored pathfinders, relevant full-text and bibliographic databases, a virtual reference collection of “best” Internet reference sources, document delivery services, and an on-call reference librarian. There is no physical library at corporate headquarters in Englewood, Colorado.
Jones’ cybrarian recently noted with me that “the role of virtual libraries is to meet the needs of students who are unable to access the resources of a campus-based academic library for any number of reasons.” In the JIU case, adult working students are drawn from all over the world “so they would be unable to travel to a JIU-based library;” thus, “we had to find some way to take the library to them. Physical disabilities, family commitments and consequent time constraints, and professional travel schedules are other types of circumstances that would make virtual libraries a necessary alternative for some students.”
- Webster University (http://www.websteruniv.edu). is a good example of an entrepeneurial, campus-based university with sizable virtual and off-site learning programs. Webster, based in St. Louis, Missouri, has long been known for its innovative work in adult education and international education. The University offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs and enrolls approximately 15,000 students throughout its system. That system includes 24 metropolitan centers across nine states, 32 military education centers across 12 states,
instructional sites in Geneva, Leiden, London and Vienna as well as sites in China and Thailand. At any one time approximately 60 percent of Webster’s students are studying at a distance and 70 percent of all enrollments are in graduate degree programs. Webster has created one of the more striking and responsive
virtual libraries to date with its PASSPORTS system (http://library.websteruniv.edu). Indeed, the NCA team’s report on Webster in 1998 noted that “perhaps the most important and forward thinking development has occurred with the implementation of the PASSPORTS system. Clearly, the institution has taken seriously the expectation that students at its extended campuses be provided with a broad range of library services and resources.” Webster’s model has a particular focus on providing faculty with software and assignment templates that will help them integrate information technology throughout their curriculum.
- The American Graduate School of International Management (commonly known as Thunderbird) is typical of the more interesting graduate institutions who have significant virtual dimensions. Based in Glendale, Arizona, Thunderbird offers only the Master of International Management degree but is considered to be among the premier programs of its kind in the world. Students may take courses toward their degrees in Geneva and Tokyo plus there is a growing program delivered to Latin America. The far-flung nature of Thunderbird instruction presents special challenges for both faculty and the library. To support electronic solutions and to provide resources to its students, Thunderbird has developed an electronic instructional portal called “My Thunderbird.” All community members, anywhere in the world, may use it to exchange information including much of what is available in its library known as the International Business Information Center (http://t-bird.edu/research/ibic). Two examples illustrate how students use Thunderbird’s virtual library:
1. A group of students in Czechoslovakia working on a marketing project for an American restaurant chain that wishes to do business in Prague use “My Thunderbird” to search ProQuest for relevant articles, the Political Risk Yearbook Online, and the Global Gateway (IBIC’s webpage) for links to web sites in Czechoslovakia to research business conditions as they prepare their reports.
2. Students working on an internship in Panama go to “My Thunderbird” to use IBIC resources for research on automotive imports for a study they have been assigned.
- Walden University, considered one of the grandfathers of non-degree, distributed graduate education, offers doctorates and masters in seven areas. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Walden’s programs consist of curriculum delivered in a variety of modes including asynchronous online instruction. Faculty and students use the World Wide Web and Walden’s virtual library, the Walden Information Network (http://waldenu.edu/prospective/about/library.html) to facilitate highly interactive online seminar discussions. Walden has followed the unique path of collaboration with Indiana University, Bloomington, for access to Indiana’s physical and electronic resources and document delivery privileges. Walden funds an office in Bloomington from which it provides library services to its 1,400 students living in all 50 states and in 23 countries. Most interaction occurs in the virtual environment via phone, FAX, or the Walden Information Network interface. Walden offers students the opportunity to attend group instruction sessions during monthly four-day residencies and during its annual 2-week summer session held on the Bloomington campus.
Lessons to be Learned
For librarians and administrators associated with more traditional institutions who may wish to draw lessons from these and other emerging entrepreneurial institutions, I’d suggest the following be considered:
- Try to keep the promise of technology in perspective. The allure of technology can become a drain on resources, even for virtual institutions that depend on technology for their existence. If you’re planning to develop a virtual library, you’re likely to find—as online course developers have found—that virtual
libraries are works in progress. They will continue to require ongoing outlays for maintenance, upgrading and revamping if they are to retain their relevance.- Learn from the leading-edge virtual education providers. Those libraries who aim to put their toes in the virtual waters can benefit from the experience of places like Webster, Phoenix, Walden and others who have carefully integrated electronic information products with more traditional services and elements associated with academic libraries.
- Learn how these institutions have focused on the client. The student is regarded as the true center of these institutions. The educational activities and information service products that the client desires predominate in the design and implementation of their programs.
- Be open to the reality that the best virtual universities have contracted, in innovative fashion, for services with other entities to provide selected administrative and student support services not directly related to the teaching/learning process. You may be contacted by one or more of these new institutions soon! They may wish to “buy” access to certain levels and types of library resources you hold. Be prepared to negotiate a fair “win-win” contract.
- Be open—not resigned—to the fact that more students in the future will be simultaneously affiliated with multiple educational providers. You will soon have some student, if you don’t already, who will be taking coursework at your university and at a virtual university.
- Understand that the basic building blocks of the university—student support services, libraries, and instructional functions—will become less well structured and more diverse among providers.
- Realize that asynchronous delivery of instruction will call into question how the library and its resources will be integrated into a learning format that is largely not classroom or location dependent. Even traditional residential universities will begin to experiment with some level of distance delivered online instruction over the next decade.
Final Thoughts
The larger number of courses offered from virtual universities typically mandate little research and supplemental reading beyond their modularized, tightly packaged designs. However, those library resources made available to students within the framework of a virtual library are often carefully selected, continuously assessed with respect to utility and value, and integrated into online courseware. Still there remain many unanswered questions surrounding the recent rush toward online instruction and the accompanying desire to accommodate libraries to this unique learning mode. How do those who are developing electronic, virtual libraries (often themselves not librarians) provide assurance of quality in the resources they mass? How do we structure library information content and provide content access to meet the curricular demands of information age learners given the immense power and flexibility of the new technologies? Is the direction of online courses constrained by the present limitations of virtual libraries?
A healthy skepticism is certainly in order when evaluating claims for the transforming power of both the virtual learning environment and the electronic, virtual libraries that augment the fairly routine and structured courseware characteristic of these learning contexts. Most educational technology introduced over the last fifty years has only supplemented and not supplanted traditional classroom instruction. Indeed these technologies have without exception added to the cost of instruction, not reduced it.
As Michael Dertouzos has noted, “lighting a fire in the students’ hearts, role modeling and nurturing may contribute more to learning than the neatest hyper-linked courseware.”6 We need to remember that residential universities and their libraries, often conceived as intellectual commons, have more often than not done a splendid job of doing just this. Virtual universities and their virtual libraries are not so much threats to the extinction of more traditional universities and libraries as they are opportunities for reflection on what the latter can do more effectively given their largely residential, face-to-face environments.
—Edward D. Garten, Dean, Libraries and Information Technologies, University of Dayton, Ohio, is also an experienced consultant-evaluator with the North Central Association and a member of the Registry of External
Examiners with the Global Alliance for Transnational Education.
References
1Kelly McCollum, “Accreditation of On-Line University Draws Fire,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2, 1999, p. A33.
2Goldie Blumenstyk and Kelly McCollum, “2 Reports Question Utility and Accessibility in Distance Education,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 16, 1999, p. A31.
3Lawrence E. Gladieux and Scott Swail Watson, The Virtual University and Educational Opportunity. New York: The College Board, 1999, p. 7, 8.
4David Noble, “Education as a Commodity: The Virtual University and the Cost of Production.” Adult Assessment Forum. Winter 1997, p. 12-13, 17.
5Walt Crawford, Being Analog: Creating Tomorrow’s Libraries. Chicago: ALA, 1999, p. 86.
6Michael Dertouzos, “The People’s Computer,” Technology Review, September/October 1998, p. 20.
Counterpoint: Virtual Pottage
By Fred Jenkins The headlong rush into virtual education raises some serious questions about the nature and purpose of higher education, as well as the motives of those who are behind the current push to disembody it. The most enthusiastic promoters of the virtual university are business people who want (or want to sell) low-cost job training, elected officials who want to cut costs, administrators who are concerned primarily with cost and market share, and consumers (formerly known as students) who want degrees with the least possible cost, inconvenience, or effort.1 The driving factors are clearly cost and convenience, not educational standards or quality.
University faculty have rightly raised concerns about the quality of current virtual education and the rush to accredit it. The response of accrediting bodies to these concerns has been dismissive rather than reasoned. The fact that many traditional universities share some of the same faults as the virtual (e.g., excessive dependence on part-time faculty and undemanding courses with short reading lists) is something of a red herring and reflects poorly on both types of institutions and their accrediting bodies.
Traditional higher education has always had many place-bound features at its core. The university is first and foremost a community of scholars and teachers. Teaching is by example as well as through lecture and discussion. Students not only acquire knowledge and critical skills, they are socialized both into a broader society and into particular disciplines and professions. They encounter a more heterogeneous society and learn to live with
diverse populations and points of view. Indeed, the often-expressed demand for students able to deal with diversity issues and work in teams is far better met by traditional institutions. This is not to say that there is not a place for virtual education. It has proven itself effective in delivering many types of job training, especially in the arena of continuing education and professional recertification. But as basic, broad-based undergraduate education, it is a poor substitute. In the case of graduate degree programs, where socialization within a given discipline is a fundamental goal, the value of a virtual degree is even more questionable.
Library Services in a Virtual World
While there is much debate about the future of libraries, it is clear to anyone who looks at the annual output of physical books as reported in Publishers Weekly or the Bowker Annual that print is far from dead. Much valuable material still appears solely in printed form. Most earlier publications also are available only in print and are likely to remain so. Major transitions in the form of information typically leave many documents stranded in the old form, as was the case with the shift from papyrus roll to codex between the second and fifth centuries A.D.2 Electronic publications will continue to grow in bulk and importance. Yet printed materials and the physical libraries that house them will remain an integral part of education, unless we are willing to throw out much of our cultural and intellectual heritage. Nor is loss of content the only concern. Reading on a computer screen is a qualitatively different experience from reading a traditional book or journal article. Reading a book lends itself to contemplation and reflection; it is an altogether deeper and more transformative experience than the discursive hopping of hyperlinks.3
Likewise, the library remains important as a place. It provides an oasis of quiet in an increasingly cacophonous world, a place where study is encouraged and supported. It allows scholars and students to browse materials that might well be overlooked in a virtual environment. In addition, face-to-face reference encounters offer far superior results to e-mail reference services. Nonverbal communication often plays a vital role in successful reference
interviews. Good reference librarians frequently spot and help perplexed users who would not seek assistance on their own. Much of this carries over into effective bibliographic instruction as well.
“demand for students
able to deal with diversity issues
and work in teams is far better met
by traditional institutions.”
Clearly even the best virtual library will be at a considerable disadvantage. Jones International University, for example, may offer an excellent selection of electronic resources, yet totally fail to provide access to the vast amount of information available only in print form. It may offer reference services and bibliographic instruction by e-mail, but these will remain one-dimensional and less effective than traditional encounters.
Final Thoughts
To many, virtual higher education seems to offer a panacea: reduced costs and greater convenience to students. The quality of the experience, however, is too often glossed over. Quality education is not cheap nor is it always convenient. It is distressing that so much of the movement to virtual and other alternative forms of higher education is driven by commercial interests.4 In recent years another sector has been converted from a largely nonprofit (and sometimes admittedly inefficient) basis to rationalized, for-profit operations. It is the health care sector. How many of us would want to see the educational equivalent of managed care? As in the case of health care, it would contribute to the growing inequality in our society. Those at the top of the socio-economic heap would still have access to high-quality residential education, which would prepare them for leadership positions in society. Most others would be relegated to cheap and efficient job training.5 The ultimate question is not one of economics or technical possibilities, it is: in what kind of society do we want to live? —Fred Jenkins is Coordinator and Head of Collection Management at the University of Dayton, Ohio.
References
1The attitude of a typical consumer/student is well illustrated by Jeffrey R. Young, “A Virtual Student Teaches Himself,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 7, 1999, p. A31.
2James J. O’Donnell, Avatars of the Word (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 50-53 provides a convenient overview.
3Sven Birkerts, among others, has written much on the qualitative experience of reading. See his Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994).
4See Kim Strosnider, “For-Profit University Challenges Traditional Colleges,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 1997, p. A32; Goldie Blumenstyk, “Moving Beyond Textbook Sales, Harcourt Plans to Open a For-Profit University,” Chronicle of Higher Education, June 4, 1999, p. A32; and Jeffrey Selingo, “For-Profit Colleges Aim to Take a Share of State Financial-Aid Funds,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 24, 1999, p. A41.
5Many of these points have also been made by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, “Universities in the Digital Age,” pp, 39-60 in The Mirage of Continuity; Reconfiguring Academic Information Resources for the 21st Century, ed. by Brian L. Hawkins and Patricia Battin (Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 1998).
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