QUICK CLICKS:

Higher Ed Home

Table of Contents
December 1999

Advocate Online

They're talking on campus...

On the Road

Action Line

In the Know

From Capital to Campus

NEA Affiliates in Action

Thriving in Academe

Higher Education News

Money Savvy

The Dialogue

Speaking Out

Distance Ed Quality Checklist

NEA's guidelines for quality cybereducation call for online courses to parallel traditional classroom offerings.

Florida's teachers unions-including the United Faculty of Florida, the NEA affiliate that represents the entire Florida State University system-have voted to create the second state-level merger of NEA and AFT affiliates. The new, combined union will have roughly 120,000 members.

Worried about how to judge distance education offerings on your campus? NEA has developed a distance education quality checklist, adopted at last summer's Representative Assembly, that can help you determine which online courses are right for you or your students.

First and foremost on the quality agenda: Distance education courses must be of at least the same quality as similar courses delivered by traditional means, according to the NEA guidelines. And online instructors must have the same qualifications as those teaching in traditional classrooms.

Educators, the checklist notes, must also have training in teaching online and a reasonable amount of time to prepare and instruct.

In addition, students must have access to the same sort of institutional support, such as laboratories, libraries, and counseling centers, that they would have in a traditional setting.

The full guidelines are available at www.nea.org/technology/briefs/16.html.

Dr. Beverly Caffee Glenn has joined NEA as director of its Human and Civil Rights unit. Dr. Glenn brings more than 20 years of experience in education policy and administrative work, having served most recently as the dean of the School of Education at Howard University in Washington, D.C. from 1989 to 1992.

The fall 1999 issue of Thought & Action, NEA's Higher Education Journal will be in your mailboxes shortly. The fall issue features a symposium on knowledge workers and the New Unionism.

Find out all about NEA Conference 2000 Quality Education for All at www.nea.org/he/conf2k. Conference 2000, April 7-9 in Atlanta, will bring together the entire NEA education community around the theme: Quality Education for All. Hotel and travel information is available on line at the conference Web site--and a registration form at: www.nea.org/he/conf2k/regform.html.