UMassOnline Announcements
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Is an online program right for you?
April 22, 2002
Living in this fast-paced, high-tech world, you know that there are huge benefits to a
university education... whether that means finishing your bachelor’s degree, getting a
professional certificate or continuing your education at the graduate level.
But, you also know that life’s demands leave little time for returning to campus! Online
education programs offer alternatives to traditional classroom learning, and can be a
better investment of your valuable time -- letting you spend it studying instead of
commuting.
If you are considering online education, here are some of the questions you’ll want to
ask:
1. Can online learning be a credible alternative to classroom learning?
2. Will a degree or certificate earned online hold the same value as credentials from a
campus-based program?
3. Will my instructor give me the personalized interaction that I would get in a
classroom?
4. How will I communicate with other students?
5. Once I’m an online student, do I have the option of learning in the classroom?
6. Do I need to be a computer whiz to use the technology?
Can online learning be a credible alternative to classroom learning?
Yes, it can, if it is done with a well-respected institution with a quality program. A
quality online program creates a rich learning environment, enables quality interaction
between faculty and students, and provides solid credentials from a reputable institution.
Will a degree or certificate earned online hold the same value as credentials from a
campus-based program?
You will want a degree or certificate that will be recognized throughout your career! If a
university has been well known for 150 years it will likely be there for you over the next
20 years! Don’t be misled by programs that claim to use faculty and curricula from
prestigious institutions. If the organization touts “brand name” course content, be sure
you will be getting a “brand name” degree.
Will my instructor give me the personalized interaction that I would get in a classroom?
Interaction with the instructor is a very important aspect of a quality online education.
The methods of that interaction differ in on line programs, but quality programs give you
the same level of commitment, attention and expertise from faculty as an on-campus
program. Ask whether online programs are held to the same academic requirements as
on-campus programs. Ask whether the faculty is part of a credentialed academic
department.
How will I communicate with other students?
A quality online program will enable you to have virtual conversations and collaborate on
projects with other students without having to be online at the same time. Threaded
discussions and live chat are often used to debate concepts and opinions with faculty and
other students. An online course is far more than just reading material and taking tests.
Once I’m an online student, do I have the option of learning in the classroom?
If flexibility is important, look for programs that offer both online and “face-to-face.”
Universities with multiple campuses and/or outreach centers can give you this option.
Some programs offer a “blended” approach combining on-line and face-to-face
components. Conversely, when you are looking at classroom-based programs, consider
selecting a program that gives you an online option. The key here is to find the
combination of flexibility and quality that meets your needs as a student.
Do I need to be a computer whiz to use the technology?
Not at all! Online programs are accessible to anyone who can do email and web surfing.
In my experience, students pick this up quite quickly in the first week and thereafter find
themselves focusing most of their attention on the course material and very little on the
technology. On-line education is not about technology. It is about learning, students,
faculty, interactions, and success.
Not much different than traditional education, is it?
_____
by Jack M. Wilson, CEO of UMassOnline
Why UMassOnline
The University of Massachusetts has been a leader in distance education for over 25
years. In 1975 we were among the first to send out videotaped engineering courses and
we were one of the seven founding members of National Technological University. We
have been delivering education via the Web since 1995.
Now, we are putting the power of the five-campus University behind online higher
education. UMassOnline is the one-stop marketplace for the University's online courses,
certificates, degree programs, and corporate and professional education opportunities.
UMassOnline is UMass
UMassOnline students are UMass students and receive the same benefits as their oncampus peers:
An internationally recognized faculty, including winners of the world's most prestigious
awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize, National Book Award for Poetry, and
the Draper Award in Engineering.
A fully accredited university with highly ranked schools and colleges.
A 300,000 alumni network, including successful, highly respected industry leaders,
scientists, authors, astronauts, hi-tech entrepreneurs, and entertainers.
A staff and faculty committed to meeting the needs of students, whether on campus or
off.
Rigorous academic requirements that guarantee a degree or certificate of great value.
The University's reputation as a world-class research institution, consistently producing
important research advances.
Part-time programs enabling students to fulfill professional and family obligations.
[CEO Jack Wilson&apos;s photo]
A Message from the CEO
Jack Wilson
The University of Massachusetts President and Board of Trustees created UMassOnline
to serve the community educational needs of the Commonwealth and beyond by
providing high-quality educational programs over the Internet. UMassOnline draws on
the faculty and curricula of the five UMass campuses, as well as a state of the art
technology platform, to deliver the highest quality online educational experiences.
Today with 31 of the University's outstanding degrees and certificates available online,
UMassOnline is proud to be helping busy professionals, lifelong learners and many
others to continue their education even when they cannot return to campus. During the
2001-2002 academic year, UMassOnline, in collaboration with each campus' Continuing
Education unit, supported 9,164 online program enrollments. UMass now offers 7
graduate degrees, 6 undergraduate degrees, and 18 certificate programs in disciplines
including liberal arts, education, management, professional programs and information
technology.
If you are a busy professional who would like to further your education, enhance your
career, or enrich your life, I hope that you will consider UMassOnline as your educational
partner.
About Us
About UMassOnline
The UMassOnline Executive Team
UMassOnline Contact Information
About UMassOnline
The University of Massachusetts President and Board of Trustees created UMassOnline
in 2001 to serve the community educational needs of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts and beyond by offering accredited educational programs via interactive,
Internet-based learning systems.
UMassOnline draws on the faculty and curricula of UMass Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth
and Lowell, as well as a state of the art technology platform, to deliver the highest quality
online education. Online programs are taught by the same committed world-class faculty,
and are held to the same rigorous academic requirements as on-campus programs.
Academic programs are fully accredited by the relevant accrediting bodies such as the
New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). Degrees are granted by the
sponsoring campus.
Today with more than 30 of the University's outstanding degrees and certificates
available online, UMassOnline is proud to be helping busy professionals, lifelong
learners and students worldwide to continue their educations, enhance their careers and
enrich their lives - even when they cannot return to campus.
During the 2001-2002 academic year, UMassOnline, in collaboration with each campus'
Continuing Education unit, supported 7,824 online program enrollments.
A Message from President William M. Bulger
Welcome to UMassOnline. Welcome to the University of Massachusetts.
At the dawning of the 21st century, UMassOnline is the place where the University of
Massachusetts seeks to dramatically expand access to the excellent educational
opportunities present on our campuses in Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell and
Worcester.
Just as our great land grant University was created in 1863 to broaden access to learning,
UMassOnline is built to eliminate all remaining geographical and temporal barriers
between potential students and our world-class faculty.
With UMassOnline, everybody with access to the internet -- in their home, work place,
school, or public library -- can have a virtual front row seat in a University classroom. At
your fingertips you will find programs ranging from the liberal arts to information
technology to business education.
UMass is Featured in US News & World Report
[U.S._News_logo] Programs offered by the UMass campuses through UMassOnline are
featured in US News & World Report's October 15, 2001, ''Best of the Online Grad
Programs'' issue.
UMassOnline In the News
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The Boston Globe -- Online ed taking off
June 16, 2002
By Agnes Blum, Globe Correspondent, 6/16/2002
When Mari Sayama's husband got a good job in Japan last year, she wanted to move
there with him, but she also wanted to continue her studies at the University of
Massachusetts at Boston.
So she did both.
Sayama, 33, joined the ranks of students pursuing degrees online. Despite the economic
downturn, and the closure of many virtual universities because of management problems,
online education is alive and well.
The convenience of being able to take a class at 2 a.m. wearing pajamas - or from as far
away as Japan - ensures these programs will attract students, supporters say.
"I am very happy I can continue my graduate education," said Sayama, who is pursuing a
master's degree in counseling with UMassOnline. "Studying counseling in two different
cultures is quite a stimulating experience that widens my views."
UMassOnline Announcements
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Surprises Working Online ... by Dr. David Patterson, Virtual Professor, UMass
Boston
March 14, 2002
Pasta . . . curry . . .zinfandel . . . other flavorful treats were brought by online students to
the newly decorated home of an accounting major, who was also enrolled in the same
distance learning course. We gathered with the anticipation of meeting, face-to-face,
those with whom we had “chatted” over the Internet for nearly a semester. These online
students came from all parts of Massachusetts, and though out-of-staters such as our
Floridian were unable to attend, they were kept up to speed through our usual mode of
communication — e-mail.
Students were alive with the excitement of relating to one another what it had been like
taking — for the first time ever — an academic course for credit over the Internet through
UMass Boston. It seems that these students had signed up for Universe of Music (MU
248) not only to complete an Arts requirement or to learn more about music or even to
pack yet another course into their busy schedules, but because they possessed a genuine
curiosity and sense of adventure about learning. The entire evening resounded with
commentaries on their discoveries of an array of music and information across the World
Wide Web, their animated conversation moving from stories about this or that link to
navigating the Internet to just plugging in a new set of speakers. In essence, we
adventurers found our own links to one another. Who would ever have suspected this?
Students asked, “How many times have you taught this course online?” To their surprise,
they learned that it was my very first time, the maiden voyage. For you see, I was one of
those holdouts as far as becoming involved in the new wave of information technology
was concerned. However, like the students, my curiosity finally got the best of me, and so
this past fall I embarked upon the oftentimes forbidding prospect of designing and
leading a course so completely bound up in computers.
To my surprise and delight, just about everything needed for our study about the universe
of music could be found on the World Wide Web. Out with the expensive textbooks and
their CDs and in with an electronic text fused with hyperlinks for adventuring out into the
amazing world of music. We have compared human heartbeats and pulsars with musical
rhythms, seen and heard aboriginal instruments of Australia (bull-roarer and didjeridu),
taken virtual lessons on Indonesian gamelan instruments, studied with the aid of
computer graphics and MIDI samples how complex Latin and African polyrhythms are
created, watched video clips of whirling dervishes, and analyzed the sound production of
a Tuvan throat singer famous for singing two different pitches at the same time.
And there was yet another surprise! The scope of the papers submitted electronically —
as attachments — was not limited to text alone. Students visited sites with video clips,
audio clips, photographs, maps, charts, and much more. It seemed natural to these cyber
students to integrate them with the traditional research paper. Students could actually
illustrate in extraordinary ways the points made in their traditional texts. Topics ranged
from a study of the ragas of North Indian Classical music as performed by guru (teacher)
Ravi Shankar and his shishyas (disciples), daughter Anoushka among them, to a tracing
of three distinct stages of pop star Madonna’s ever evolving musical style.
Wondering why a distance-learning course should have a “live meeting” as one of its
requirements, we saw firsthand perhaps its greatest purpose. Simply, and to nobody’s
surprise, we found that the value of the experience was in venturing forth from the virtual
world and into the real one, finally meeting those with whom we had surfed along the
World Wide Web.
Least expected of all, though, is the impact two semesters of online teaching would have
on my classroom teaching. I did not figure on these Internet encounters with the students
and the possibilities of the World Wide Web becoming so quickly and naturally
intertwined with a lifetime of teaching. But learning is always fraught with surprises. As
one of the popular song standards of some years ago asks, what’s new?
About the author Dr. David Patterson , Professor of Music, has taught at UMB for nearly
30 years. He is a recipient of the Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award and the Chancellors
Distinguished Teaching Award. On May 11, his composition, Isle of Hope , will be
performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the Ellis Island Medals of Honor opening
ceremony.
Music 248 is offered online this summer through University of Massachusetts Boston.
UMassOnline In the News
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eLearning, Is it over?
January 2002
by Jack M. Wilson, CEO, UMassOnline
Is it over? The eLearning boom that is.
Last year, almost every college and university announced that they were going on-line.
Venture capitalists dumped billions into eLearning start-ups of all kinds. There were
billions to be made and the first movers would be the ones to profit! Or so we thought.
The new “for-profit” start-ups dangled visions of millions of dollars in front of Presidents
and Deans, and some jumped at the chance.
Pensare teamed up with Duke. Click2Learn teamed with NYU Online. Fathom teamed
with XanEdu. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School teamed with Caliber, a
spin-off from Sylvan Learning. Cornell spun of eCornell to the consternation of faculty.
Kaplan Ventures, Knowledge Universe, Pearson, and Sylvan Ventures made investments
and acquisitions totaling $3.6 billion in 2000 and were expected to invest at least $2
billion additional in 2001 and 2002. UNext created Cardean University and partnered
with Columbia, the London School of Economics, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the
University of Chicago. Reportedly Cardean had pledged to pay Columbia, and perhaps
the others, $20 million dollars if they failed within five years. The exact structure of the
contracts is not public. North Carolina, Harvard, and the University of Southern
California went to University Access for help in getting online. Harcourt Higher
Education was launched as a college in 2000 and confidently predicted “50,000 to
100,000 enrollments within five years.”
That was then and this is now. Pensare is gone. Unable to attract the external financing
that it had hoped for, Fathom had to obtain $20 million in financing internally. Cardean
has laid off over half its work force this year and has asked the universities to restructure
the business arrangement. Rumors suggest that “restructure” means that the universities
are not getting their $ 20 million after all! Temple University, who had followed the
crowd in creating a for-profit spin-off, quietly closed that spin-off without really ever
activating it. They got more press for closing a virtually non-existent operation than most
others get for running viable programs! Harcourt is gone after enrolling a total of 32
students in 2001. eCornell is open now, but with very small programs and drastically
reduced expectations. Caliber has filed for bankruptcy. University Access has changed its
name and withdrawn from higher education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education asks wryly Is anyone making money on on-line
learning? The conclusion seems to be that there are indeed a few organizations that have
demonstrated viability. The University of Maryland University College’s effort UMUCOnline, Penn State’s World Campus and the University of Massachusetts UMass Online
represent campus based programs that have had some success. The University of Phoenix
is everyone’s poster child for the for-profit online university, either as a cautionary tale of
a market mentality applied to higher education or as an investment success that
demonstrates the viability of such an approach.
The very mixed picture is probably a manifestation of the confusion that reigns about the
purpose and the place for on-line higher education.
It’s about serving learners and not about using technology. First of all, designing
educational experiences around technology is a foolish chase. You cannot possibly keep
up with the technology. The paradox of technology enhanced education is that
technology changes very rapidly and human beings change very slowly. It would seem to
make sense for proponents of e-learning to begin with the students. At least that is a
relatively slow moving target. Deployment of technology then becomes an exercise in
applying a rapidly improving technology to a very consistent set of goals. Although this
can be a challenge, it is a much more doable task. Over the last 15 years, the state of the
art in distance learning has gone from satellite delivery of video, through interactive
compressed video or video conferencing to web based on-line learning. The Sloan
Foundation did much to popularize the standard model of on-line learning as
Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN). This model was further enshrined when the
U.S. Department of Education created the Learning Anytime Anyplace Partnerships
program (LAAP) around the Sloan Model. The anytime-anyplace mantra became
accepted dogma in the on-line world. Proponents of the ALN models often looked down
their noses at their colleagues still operating in the older video based worlds.
Unfortunately the doctrine of the “anytime-anyplace” ALN model also had it’s own
flaws. The “asynchronous” nature of the model certainly had some advantages of
flexibility for the student and manageability for the institution, but it also has some
challenges in the area of retention and completion. Further, it often enshrined technology
limitations as necessary elements of the new model. Technology did not easily support
audio or video over the network in the early days. Thus the ALN model envisioned both
threaded discussions and live chat. This was supposed to provide some of the interactivity
that is vital to any effective learning experience. Video and audio were neglected as
important tools. Making a virtue of necessity, we began to see articles talking about why
a model that had students typing at one another was superior to students talking to one
another.
Both experience and research tends to indicate that audio and video interactions have
some advantages over typing interactions. Even more interesting: audio tends to be more
important than video. Audio, video, threaded discussion, and live chat all have their
advantages and disadvantages. Which modalities to use in a given educational
environment should be a pedagogical question first and a technical question second.
Enshrining technical limitations as pedagogical advantages is not a productive trade.
Content is not king. When MIT announced that it was providing free access to the
materials from all of its courses, I was immediately called by several reporters all asking
variations of the question: “If MIT is giving away their courses for free, why would
anyone pay for courses from UMass.” I would ask the reporter if MIT was giving away
access to their classes, their academic credit, their faculty, their students, their campus,
their library, or any other aspect of their educational environment. The answer was
always no. MIT is planning to give away free access to (some of) their content. That is
all. Of the entire value chain of higher education, content is the least valuable part.
Another way to look at this was to point out that over one hundred and seventy students
paid over $3000 each to be in my “live-on-line” class last year, and yet all of the content
of that class was available for free on the web or for roughly $50 in a text! If so, why
were the students so anxious to pay the $3000 that I had to raise the course enrollment
limit four times?
UNext, through its Cardean University offspring planned to acquire content from the
leading universities in the United States and Europe. They then spent amounts up to
$700,000 per course to massage that content into very well produced on-line courses.
Unfortunately the expected market has yet to materialize. Students want access to
Columbia and Stanford degrees, faculty, fellow students, and classes, and not to their
content. Harcourt stumbled on the content issue in a different way. As a leading content
provider, they assumed that they had a leg up on the competition with their extensive
library of content. To their credit they quickly realized the need for the rest of the value
chain and set about building it from scratch. Still it is hard to build a reputation in a few
months that took the universities over a century to acquire.
Reputation is “a very big thing.” It is more than “brand name.” Reputation includes the
organization’s brand image but it sets a much higher bar. Conventional wisdom in the ebusiness world suggested that brand could be built by clever advertising campaigns or
that it could be inherited from the brand equity of the parent. Harcourt Higher Education
thought that students would flock to an organization sporting the brand name of a wellknown publisher. Cardean thought that it could sell it’s very expensively produced
courses to a public anxious to get access to the brands of its partners, Columbia, the
London School of Economics, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Chicago.
When a person buys athletic shoes, that person may not really care how long the maker
has been in business. They just like the style, the price, and the image created by an
expensive advertising campaign. When individuals look for an educational experience,
they want their credentials from an organization with an outstanding reputation and a
very high probability for being in business throughout their careers. Universities measure
their lives in centuries, while most businesses think in years. No one wants a degree or
certificate from any organization that has any appreciable probability or disappearing in
the next ten years. No amount of advertising can overcome this.
It’s about culture, stupid. They say it is easier to move a graveyard than it is to change a
university. That is usually meant as an insult, and those of us who advocate change in
universities certainly chafe at the slow pace of that change. While there is lots of room
for universities to move faster and be more responsive to community needs, there is little
likelihood that those changes will bring the universities to the quarter-to-quarter
mentality of the business world. There is a major cultural difference here, and that is
probably a good thing. Universities should be institutions that take the longer view.
Joint ventures that bring together business organizations with a high “need for speed” in
partnership with universities with slower, more collegial, processes seems to me to be an
impossible combination, and I have led both kinds of organization. It is probably not an
accident that the University of Phoenix is the most successful of the for-profit companies.
They did it (mostly) on their own without the entangling alliances of Pensare, Caliber,
UNext, and others that would partner with higher education. On the other side, the
University of Maryland, Penn State, Illinois, Massachusetts, and other state ventures may
have a better chance for success because they are not in major partnerships with corporate
ventures. There are many ways for corporations and universities to partner, but virtual
universities do not appear to be one of them.
The organizations also have value systems that conflict in fundamental ways. While the
universities often strive for access, quality, research excellence, service, and teaching for
teaching’s sake, a corporation is driven by financial considerations first and then other
values to the extent that they are compatible with financial success. There is nothing
wrong with this difference. No corporation would survive long enough to do pro-bono
work if it was not financially successful first. Although the same thing could be said
about the universities, the usual method of funding of universities from tuition and
government sources tends to obscure this fact. The difference is just a fundamental
difference in culture.
Money does matter. To a businessperson, it must be a surprise that I would even need to
assert this. To most university faculty, this claim may be an insult, but the university’s
behavior demonstrates this to be a fact. As the major funders of university research, the
NIH, the NSF, and the Defense Department drive the direction of faculty research. We
may say that we independently select our research targets, but the evidence suggests that
the funders can significantly alter universities research efforts. The enormous amount of
time and concern that state universities give to securing maximal government support and
that private universities give to increasing their endowments is additional evidence.
On-line and distance learning can be a significant additional revenue stream for
traditional universities. In addition to the direct revenue from student tuition, there are
also increased benefits in other areas due to the visibility and connections that get created
to corporations. When a university is serving the educational needs of a corporation, the
corporation will often think of that university when it comes to research contracts and
philanthropy. It may not be the primary driver, as alumni ties often are, but it does make a
difference.
Any course creation model that leads toward very high cost/high quality production
values is often on shaky ground to begin with. History is replete with examples of high
production value efforts, which do not do well in the market. The 1980’s effort to create
an introductory physics course, the Mechanical Universe, that takes advantage of Lucas
film like Hollywood special effects was an excellent example. It cost over $10 million to
produce. The results were most impressive as television and a disappointment as
education. There was no business model, which could recoup the cost. The Cardean
model of high cost course production may be the latest example of the mismatch between
the consumer and the producer.
It also matters where the money goes. Many of the for-profit spin-offs of universities
expected to be able to access the venture capital markets to finance their expansion plans.
These plans failed for two major reasons. The first is that few venture capitalists are
foolish enough to finance a venture where the control rests with a university. Private
universities are difficult enough, but the concept of a venture capitalist in partnership
with state governments is a real stretch. The second is that venture capitalists expect a
substantial return on their money in a short period of a few years. In the heady days of the
dot-com boom, few would look at any deal that did not promise at least a “ten bagger,” or
a ten-fold return on investment. That’s ten fold and not 10 %. Imagine the dialog with
faculty members who are being asked to extend themselves to help build the new virtual
university. Now imagine when you tell them that the goal is to get a ten-fold return for
investors! Hardly an easy sell at the faculty senate. Virtual universities seem to do better
when faculty can see that the benefits of the effort accrue directly to the institution and
provide extra resource to support research, teaching, and service.
Barriers to entry may be low, but barriers to success are certainly quite high. A cursory
examination of the patterns of development of virtual universities demonstrates that it is a
lot harder to be successful than many thought. It is very easy to start a virtual university.
All one had to do was to set up a server, create a portal, acquire a learning management
system, develop some courses, and begin the marketing. For those institutions finding
this too much to contemplate, learning service providers would come in and do it all for
you. Entry was easy.
As we have seen, finding success has been considerably more difficult. Even defining
success becomes elusive. For those institutions that took the for-profit route, either on
their own or in a joint venture, success often meant large financial returns.
Now that visions of e-learning billions have evaporated for most institutions, we will get
down to the serious business of creating the leading virtual universities. These institutions
will be both public and private. We have seen that both models can work if the
institutions are clear about their goals and organize themselves appropriately. Mixing
unlike goals or a lack of clarity in goals will continue to be a sign of expected failure.
Nearly every university will have some involvement in on-line learning, but not every
university will be a net exporter of educational programs. Reputation, or brand, will be
very important, but it will not be the whole story. Strong brands with weak programs will
not be successful. There will be room for different kinds of brands to serve different
characteristics of learners. Some will be price sensitive and some will not. Some will
want nothing but the designer brand programs and some will seek commodity style
education at wholesale prices. Just as some people buy Mercedes while others buy
Chevrolets, learners will seek out brands that appeal to their sense of themselves and their
needs. Even within a market segment, there will be room for market differentiation. Some
will prefer Ford to Chevy. Others will want BMW instead of Mercedes.
The e-learning revolution is not over. It is just entering a more intelligent and less selfindulgent phase. History demonstrates that the first movers in technology are rarely the
eventual leaders. Dumont may have invented the television, but the company disappeared
in the early days of television. Edison invented electrical generation, but his DC systems
lost out to the AC systems of later competitors.
There is lots of opportunity for excitement in the next few years. Moore’s law is
continuing the relentless increase in computing power and continuing to push down
prices. The bandwidth law shows that we will continue to see faster and faster networks
bringing higher and higher quality materials into our homes. There is much that is
predictable over the coming decade. Technology is relentless and dependable in its
advance. Human beings will continue to exhibit the characteristics that they have
exhibited for centuries. Maslov’s hierarchy of human needs will change little. The
paradox of a rapidly changing technology serving a slowly changing humankind will
provide opportunities for those who start from culture, values, and human need and have
the insight and courage to know how technology can serve these.