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Learning about Distance Learning

NEA focus group session probes how faculty feel about the promise and peril of new 'Information Age' instruction

Distance learning faculty want their union to be a strong public voice on behalf of distance learning—but distance learning that maintains the quality of education.

This was the consensus of faculty gathered this past summer for a focus group session held at NEA headquarters. The session brought together 12 distance learning and traditional instructors who had taken part in an earlier survey of faculty attitudes toward distance learning.

Researchers aimed to gain a better understanding of the complexity of opinions and feelings expressed in the earlier phone survey.

The focus groups confirmed the original survey's finding that the ability distance learning offers to reach more students is why so many faculty—72 percent in the survey—have a positive attitude about distance learning.

Most faculty respondents said the increased interaction with students in distance courses was positive, many respondents were concerned that such interaction lacked a human face.

The 2001 NEA Higher Education Conference at the Wyndham Plaza Hotel in San Diego will explore the business of higher education.

In response to political and business pressures, higher education institutions are now, conference organizers note, partnering with corporations, banding together to market faculty products, and restructuring academic life and governance.

The San Diego conference sessions are designed help faculty and staff prepare for an increasingly uncertain future and examine the trends that are driving higher education's future.

Registration forms and descriptions of conference sessions are available online. You can also contact the NEA Higher Education Office, 1201 16th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, phone 202-822-7162, E-mail: HigherEd@NEA.org.

The registration fee before December 15: $115 for NEA members, $175 for non-members. After this date, fees jump to $140 and $190.

The fall 2000 issue of Thought & Action—a retrospective on the journal's first 16 years—will be in your mailboxes shortly.

The issue reprints articles, from analysts ranging from Ernest Boyer to Ralph Nader, that trace the changes in the academy over the last decades of the 20th Century—and detail the faculty response-or, in some cases, lack of response—to these changes.