This content is brought to you by Audiocourses dot com
Following are experts who can discuss distance learning. The popularity of distance education has spread from colleges to earlier grades, as students in more than one-third of U.S. school districts take courses over the Internet or through video conferences, according to the first federal study of the issue:
**1. LINDA GRAETER, Ph.D., department chair of analytical and diagnostic sciences
at the UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI College of Allied Health Sciences: "Distance
learning is meeting the needs of a busy, mobile population -- one that has created
the demand for more options for lifelong learning. Distance learning programs
are offering students the chance to work outside the constraints of many other
traditional programs. The approaches to distance learning are broad, providing
limitless opportunities for exploring multiple learning methods."
**2. NANCY ROHLAND, general manager of the NATIONAL UNIVERSITY VIRTUAL HIGH
SCHOOL: "Not everyone grows up in a great school district that can offer
all the resources each individual student needs, whether it's a college-level
course for the advanced student or a specially tailored class for a student
who learns better on her own. If we as a society agree that education is the
gateway to success, then increased opportunities and methods to learn become
all the more vital. For a student who struggles in a classroom environment,
online learning allows for study at a time, pace and place that is more convenient.
For the advanced high- school student, it gives the option of jumpstarting life's
next phase -- college."
**3. JAMES MYERS, director of the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies at the
ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: "Online learning has been a revolution
at universities that adopted e-learning as part of core missions. A beauty of
online learning is it serves the needs of a wide variety of students. E- learning
expands educational access to people constrained by time or geography, has re-invigorated
the discussion around quality teaching and learning, and helped force the debate
on intellectual property on campus. ‘Blended-learning’ -- an approach
that provides students with the best of both worlds -- will prove be very successful.
RIT is adopting a blended-learning model called ‘Online OnCampus’
that extends the traditional classroom via online technology."
**4. SUSAN J. GOETZ, ED.D., director of the COLLEGE OF ST. CATHERINE's Distance
Learning Masters in Education and author of the upcoming book "Science
for Girls: Successful Strategies for the Classroom": "Distance education
is here to stay. Learners in today's world are consumers, and their needs have
evolved with the wide usage of technology. Distance education is now its own
entity, and the research has shifted from whether we can teach remotely to how
we can do it better in terms of teaching practices, student learning styles,
engaging learners remotely and building 'community.'" Goetz has presented
at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education National Conference
and addressed technology and distance-learning education issues and opportunities
at Oxford and the E-Learn 2002 conference in Montreal.
**5. PAULA O'CALLAGHAN, director of the independent study MBA program at SYRACUSE
UNIVERSITY's Whitman School of Management: "In traditional colleges, professors
will have full-time, on-campus students and a section of the same class with
distance learning part-time students. Students will have access to many more
courses than those at their area colleges. Colleges will expand their reach
and bring in students they never could have attracted before." O’Callaghan
authored the foreword to the upcoming "Complete Idiot’s Guide to
Getting Your MBA Online."
**6. THOMAS P. FAULKNER, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at OHIO NORTHERN
UNIVERSITY: "Does distance learning offer the same results as the traditional
classroom? We concluded in a study that online methods were as effective as
traditional methods and generally acceptable to the students. Successful academic
performance by traditional means and a preference for independent learning were
factors related to success.” The study by Drs. Thomas Faulkner, Jeffrey
Christoff and Marc Sweeney, and Nathan Oliver from the university’s IT
department, is published in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education.
**7. SEAN O'DONNELL, director of distance education for VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY's
College of Engineering: "To truly succeed in distance education, you have
to create a fully online learning experience that exactly replicates the traditional
in-class experience, but with the added benefits of anytime/anywhere access.
It's an approach that our faculty has embraced because it leverages their core
strengths as educators, while providing a sustainable and replicable model for
distributing learning content."
**8. DR. CHARI A. LEADER, interim provost and vice president for enrollment
management at EXCELSIOR COLLEGE: “Distance education –- the process
of learning outside the traditional classroom setting –- will continue
to expand. It will not replace campus-based learning, yet many of the nation’s
leading colleges and universities have embraced distance learning as means to
reach a broader audience for their courses and programs. From a workforce perspective,
the growth in distance learning means that education can come to the desktop,
enabling employees to remain productive while expanding their own horizons.”
**9. JAMES A. DIAS, vice president of SONIC FOUNDRY, which produces professional
digital audio editing software: "While the percentage of institutions that
offer online distance learning is impressive, dig deeper, and you will find
that the vast majority only offer 5-10 percent of courses in this manner. The
reason for this low penetration rate is traced to the complex and expensive
content creation processes, such as studio-based production or e-learning authoring,
which create new cost centers in terms of people, time and resources. Many believe
that an automated classroom-based rich media approach, which leverages existing
classes and infrastructure with fewer technical, economic and emotional hurdles
to clear, represents our best hope for reaching online education's tipping point."
Sonic Foundry's Mediasite is used by over 100 higher education and K-12 organizations
for distance education.
**10. STEVE PEHA, president of TEACHING THAT MAKES SENSE, INC.: "We have
to be careful thinking distance learning is just like classroom learning. Distance
learning is great if the learning goal is the transfer of knowledge. If you
want to get new product information to your sales force, or help high-school
kids get ready for the SAT Verbal test, distance learning's fine. It’s
less effective if the goal involves getting people to change behaviors. You
can't, for example, use distance learning effectively to improve how your sales
force works with operations. And you can't teach kids to write as well through
distance learning as you can through classroom learning because of the social
nature of the task."
**11. BILL BENOIT, co-founder of VIDERE CONFERENCING: "Vendors have recognized
the potential of conferencing in the education market and have moved aggressively
to offer custom solutions that fit their needs. There is a perfect storm happening
right now in terms of technology improvements, improved functionality, lower
pricing and increasing demand for these solutions. It all adds up to broader
deployment of conferencing technology in classrooms ranging from primary to
secondary to graduate schools." Videre customers include the University
of Massachusetts, UMASS Medical School, Brown University and the University
of Vermont.
**12. DR. ROBERT D. STOKES, assistant vice president for academic affairs at
VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY: "Benefits of distance learning include flexibility
coupled with the quality of an on-campus program. Drawbacks can be the self
discipline required by students, and it requires more planning and flexibility
on the instructor's part. Distance education will not replace traditional education,
but it will allow colleges to attract students who normally would not have considered
a distant college."
**13. A. FRANK MAYADAS, program director of THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION:
"Online learning is entering the mainstream. Previously, we have found
that a majority of academic leaders said that online learning was just as good
as traditional, face-to-face classroom instruction. We now know that schools
that are offering online courses believe their students are at least as satisfied
as those actually in the classroom."
**14. LIZ PAPE, president and CEO of VIRTUAL HIGH SCHOOL, which provides online
learning for high-school students and online course design for teachers: "To
equip students with 21st century learning skills, it is critical that we make
online learning widely available to middle- and high-school students, and this
is something that must be addressed immediately."
**15. ROGER HANLEY, vice president of academic services at ELLUMINATE, which
offers live virtual classroom software for online meeting and training with
two-way voice, whiteboard and chat, has a career in public education that spans
20 years, during which he conceived, initiated and began operating the Rocky
View Virtual School, which provides full-time education for students in grades
7-12. Hanley has led a number of speaking engagements, including various teachers'
conventions and education/technology specialist councils, and went on to become
the business area manager of Virtual High Schools at Apex Learning.
**16. RAJEEV ARORA, vice president of strategy and business development at
ELLUMINATE, has over 12 years of sales, marketing, and product development experience
in the software and Internet industries. Most recently, he was senior vice president
of products and strategic marketing at Opnix, an Internet infrastructure software
firm based in Tempe, Ariz. Prior to Opnix, Arora served as vice president of
product marketing at Viasoft, where he was responsible for launching the company's
PC software business unit. Arora has served as president and was part of the
founding team for TiE-Arizona. In the past, Arora has served on the Board of
Arizona Software Association.
**17. DR. SAM SPERO is a consultant for the Association of Modern Orthodox
Day Schools and Yeshiva High Schools (AMODS) at YESHIVA UNIVERSITY, which developed
The Distance Learning Project, part of a broad distance-learning initiative.
Comprised of a distance-learning video conferencing component and a course management
tool called “Angel,” the project is currently used at more than
20 schools throughout the U.S. and Canada.
**18. DR. ERNST EUGSTER, distance-learning instructor at the UNIVERSITY OF
DENVER, has over 20 years of engineering, marketing, and consulting experience
in the computer industry, nationally and internationally. He has written over
100 articles on information technology and has given presentations at industry
conferences, including ITU Telecom Asia 2003 held in Hong Kong. He teaches courses
in project management and information systems security and has been instrumental
in creating the university's distance learning program.
**19. PHILLIP G. KNUTEL, director of Academic Technology, Library, and Research
Services at BENTLEY COLLEGE, is an expert on distance learning, technology and
teaching, as well as technology in the classroom. Knutel provides strategic
direction regarding the use of technology in the curriculum, oversees staff
at the Academic Technology Center, and meets with faculty to discuss ideas and
coordinate projects and programs related to technology integration.
**20. DR. GARY MILLER, associate vice president for outreach at PENN STATE
UNIVERSITY, is an expert in the field of distance education. He has been cited
by Inc. Magazine, the Washington Post, Money.com magazine and the Chronicle
of Higher Education, and has presented at national and international symposiums
and conferences. Miller can help to distinguish different kinds of online education
and can also discuss quality issues, funding, demographics, satisfaction and
research related to distance education, as well as the broader issues related
to this kind of education and its future.
**21. DR. JAMES PAPPAS, vice provost of the UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA OUTREACH,
a distance-learning institution, is an expert on this growing trend among all
age groups from teens to seniors, and from high-school diplomas to Master's
degrees.
**22. JOEL SMITH is the vice provost of computing services at CARNEGIE MELLON
UNIVERSITY and lead researcher for its Open Learning Initiative, a program to
put 12 university courses on the Web.
**23. CANDACE THILLE is the project director for CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY's
Open Learning Initiative, a project to put 12 university courses on the Web.
**24. DR. P. HENRY VAN ZYL, vice provost for distance and independent adult
learning at THOMAS EDISON STATE COLLEGE, has more than 20 years of experience
in the field of distance learning. Van Zyl can speak with authority about distance
learning trends, both past and present, and new technology.
**25. CHRISTINE BEISCHEL is dean of the College of Distributed Learning at
BELLEVUE UNIVERSITY, which oversees the university's distance learning programs.
Beishcel can discuss the evolution and future of distance learning.
**26. STAN POTTS, program coordinator for online certificates in Community
Education and Service Learning at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-RIVER FALLS, can
discuss distance learning.
**27. KELLY CAIN, coordinator of the Wildlife Recreation & Nature Tourism
(WRNT) Graduate Certificate Online Program at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN- RIVER
FALLS, can discuss distance learning.
Audio
Courses Distance Learning
