The Chronicle of Higher Education: Colloquy

Many colleges that want to beef up their online course offerings are starting to buy materials developed by other institutions. The strategy has been adopted by smaller institutions, especially community colleges, that often cannot afford to develop distance-education materials on their own. But does quality suffer when professors teach courses that were developed by someone else? Or can the strategy help colleges widen access to distance education, especially when an expert in a given subject is not on hand to develop a course? Can good courses be mass-produced in this way? Will students pay to take them? Read more...

Ultimately, it is impossible to "outsource" course preparation because it is the teacher that determines what goes into a class. I teach traditional courses now using textbooks that I did not write, but it is my preparation that determines the level of quality of the class.

It would be the same if I had an online course built from materials written by someone else. Just like the textbook from another author, it is my use of the material that adds quality to the course.

Teaching a course still falls on the teacher, regardless of how many advanced tools are in use. The tools' effectiveness is determined by the user.

Does the issue here concern the outsourcing of course development as such or the unbundling of the functions of developing a course and teaching that course. For example, would the issue be any different if one faculty were to develop a course (for which he or she receives compensaiton and retains copy right) and another facuty from the same institution were to teach that coruse? Does it worry anyone that when such unbundling is systematically done, higher education courses may become indistinguishable from the canned, corporate training modules purchased by other organizations for training their employees? How does the practice affect the notion of schoalrship of teaching a la Earnest Boyer?

Going 'outside' is a sensible and cost-effectve way for colleges and universities to offer consistent, high-quality online courses.
By working with a group such as MindEdge (www.mindedge.com), a college can try various online curricula without having to make the substantial dollar investment in content development as well as the cost of staff and technical infrastructure that online offerings require. Equally important is that outsourcing for course content also avoids the 'hidden' and substantial costs of faculty and staff time (and goodwill) for a venture that may not succeed for reasons of quality, consistency, timeliness, and intellectual property issues.
Plus, outsourcing can mean fast start-up.
At the same time, it is important that the course content be easily modifiable by the instructional faculty (and the college) when and as they see fit.
An open intellectual environment is a defining characteristic of higher education; online course content and delivery using multiple sources is a scalable expression of that value.

Does the issue here concern the outsoucing as such or the unbundling of the course develpment and course delivery functions? For example, would it make a difference if one faculty were to develop a course (for which he or she receives compensation and retains copyright) and another faculty from the same institution were to teach that course? Should it be a matter of worry that with such unbundling of functions, college courses might become indistinguishable from canned, corporate training modules used by organizations for employee training? How woud this practice affect the scholarship of teaching a la Earnest Boyer especially at the graduate level?

The "outsourcing" of instructional content is hardly new. Publishers have offered "packaged" instructional materials at least since the 1960s, providing textbook users with instructional materials ranging from complete lesson plans tied to the text, additional content, exams, quizzes, answer keys, paper topics and even sample graded papers.

I've even been subjected to faculty who use such materials.

Those were the classes I knew to skip, as an undergraduate. I knew that the instructor was not bringing anything to lecture that I couldn't manage more efficiently on my own. I've had faculty in classes I've taken, as well as in classes where I've been a T.A., either read aloud the textbook (and I mean pages and pages, not excerpts) or simply plagiarize texts in their "lectures." Those too are classes that could possibly profit from "outsourcing" or perhaps moving to an online only model.

These are of course less than stellar instructional examples.

I've also looked at course packages for specific texts that are designed to be used with Content Management Systems (CMS) like Blackboard or WebCT. These packages are meant to be "complete instructional solutions" designed so that the faculty member merely "presents" the materials. The ones I've seen for English literature and linguistics have been uniformly awful.

As you can see, I don't think highly of outsourcing content.

But I've also seen some absolutely incredible teachers. There's a Milton professor on campus who creates handouts for her classes that annotate Milton, provide additional background materials, show examples of rhetorical terms and how they work, even diagram the structure of Milton's arguments. The handouts are fabulous, they really are, and I look forward to someday having time to recast them (with the faculty member's permission and cooperation) in a digital format.

But that won't give me her presence, her ability to interact with students, to spot the puzzled face in the crowd and stop for questions. She isn't outsourceable.

The best teachers aren't. Nor am I comfortable with the idea of selling their content without their participation in terms of rights and royalties.

I agree with Lisa Spangenberg (UCLA) that it is difficult to outsource good teaching.

I, too, avoided instructors who used pre-packaged materials because I didn't have confidence that they really knew the material. As a professor, I have looked at the pre-packaged course material offered by publishers and have never found any that fits my students' needs or my teaching style.

An argument can be made that developing material within a university and sharing it among faculty may be useful. The material can be developed considering the students' preparation, how the course fits into the curriculum, and the resources available to the students. However, it is more challenging to share material across universities because of these considerations.

Sharing instructional material across universities can help both instructors and students. I share much of my own material (e.g., problem sets, old exams, lectures) with many instructors at other institutions. However, it would be unusual that pre-packaged materials for entire courses offer students the depth, the diversity, and the tailoring that most of us offer our students when we prepare and deliver instructional materials.

Another aspect of the outsourcing of material is currentness. I teach in a subject area in that is dynamic; laws, regulations, and markets change every day. All instructional material becomes outdated very quickly, so any pre-packaged material, including textbooks, becomes outdated very quickly, placing the onus on faculty to update their lectures and other material quite frequently. Outsourcing instructional material in subjects that change quickly may result in poor educational quality.

First, I'd have to agree with Mr. Kanjirathinkal that there is an inherent ambiguity to the question as framed: are we talking about "outsourcing" course materials or actual teaching? As the latter raises too many ancillary issues (in my view), I am going to focus on the sharing/outsourcing of course materials.

Further, I'd view the quality control issues here as twofold: (a) how does a specific institution maintain its own standards with respect to outsourced work; and (b) how does the academic sector evaluate the quality of instruction at institutions that rely heavily on outsourced work?

In the specific case, institutions can (and perhaps should) rely on both individual faculty and collective representatives (committees on education policy, academic overseers, etc.) to review courses that draw on outside resources and materials. This is standard operating procedure: faculty are typically called upon to review their teaching materials (textbooks, etc.); and oversight committees at many institutions will review curricular offerings to ensure that quality is (relatively) uniformly sustained. For some schools, quality control occurs prior to (and in a sense, in lieu of) the kind of external review that, say, an accreditation review will offer. In other words, reviewing one's own standards can be a proactive measure - and perhaps even more so when externally-generated materials are widely circulated and used.

In the wider case of academic instruction overall, there is a historical precedent: institutional accreditation reviews have provided a kind of standardization of quality across the board. That is, most academic institutions have been subject to accreditation reviews by well-established organizations, with clear cut guidelines, processes, and standards. While not quite serving as a proxy for quality, regular accreditation reviews have (or at least have been intended to) serve as assurances that institutions' offerings are regularly scrutinized and measured against a common denominator of quality (or acceptability, in any case). One can take exception to the process; but it's a de minimis external review nonetheless.

Institutions, however, are no longer the sole purveyors of academic materials: this is what the "outsourcing" debate has clearly revealed. And so the questions arise: Who will serve as the overseer of those entities that are now generating shared materials? Should it matter whether or not these entities are comprised of peer institutions (SAIL), for-profit institutions, or single institutions that are accredited and well known (Carnegie Mellon, MIT)? Should it matter what subject matter is being covered (should funerary services and English programs merit totally separate and distinct processes/standards of review)? And can a single overarching body (the AAUP?) determine - and gain widespread acceptance for - a method for quality control that encompasses any and all academic work, materials, resources, and instructional aids?

Here's my opinion, for what it's worth: Some procedure for external review of entities generating outsourced materials must be set in place. Individual institutions can, and probably will, continue to review the use, nature, quality, and proportion of outsourced materials in their own purview. However, as we all know, self-regulation is at best a delicate matter; at worst, it can be compromised by institutional pressures as well as individual shortcomings.

The accreditation process has served as a relatively objective, externalized means of quality control. It has reviewed academic institutions - and by extension, the materials generated by these institutions. Now, however, the landscape has changed: institutions are not always generating the materials on which their faculty rely. Those entities that are generating such materials are generally unregulated (with the exception of individual accredited schools, of course). The academic sector would be well advised to establish an oversight body, and process, to review, appraise, and standardize the offerings of "outsourced" materials. How else will institutions credibly maintain their standing as "quality" providers of education?

(Name removed at author's request)

Lisa L. Spangenberg
UCLA writes...

"The best teachers aren't. Nor am I comfortable with the idea of selling their content without their participation in terms of rights and royalties."

Of course this is the principle behind publishing and book writing. However, there is an aspect of education that involves the passing of knowledge from Professor to student. For the most part, significant knowledge of a subject cannot be "owned".

If I am not mistaken, this principle of "outsourcing" involves pedological techniques more than content. As such content becomes a filler for an instructional delivery method.

I am not sure that I understand your point, Lisa. Could you pease clarify it for me?

Thanks.

My Response (Dr. Hyacinth Ezeamii, Albany State University, Albany, Georgia 31705):
I personally do not see any quality related problem in “outsourcing” course preparation to another institutions. In our effort to sift grain from the chaff, we have to reflect upon the situation in our institutions. We have to think about the situations in our respective institutions, in our academic departments, programs, curriculums, and nature of the involvement of different faculty members both new and old. When new faculty members are hired they do not start developing new courses; they are assigned courses that some old colleagues had developed. The new faculty might also be given access to whatever resources the former instructor had used.

In addition, professors use textbooks that were written by outside (known and unknown) authors to teach their classes; in many cases, the adopted texts provide frameworks for the course outlines for the classes. Stated differently, “outsourcing” of classes/courses/lecture preparation is as old as the tradition of professors adopting and using texts that were authored by different others. As with this age-old tradition of using texts that were written by others and teaching courses that were developed by old colleagues, professors who teach outsourced online programs or courses need to ask all important questions and be in constant consultation with the course developers as they strive to become familiar with this new terrain of pedagogy in American higher education.

It follows from the foregoing argument that “outsourcing course preparation” will not necessarily lower the pedagogical quality just as using a text written by another author may not affect the quality of teaching and learning in our colleges and universities.

Yes, I do believe the strategy can help colleges widen access to distance education, especially when an expert in a given subject is not on hand to develop a course? All teachers may not be course designers. Just as students pay for regular programs and courses, there is no reason why they will not pay for the online courses that are developed by another person other than the professor teaching the class.

Dr. Ezeamii,

Well, I would argue quite to the contrary:

(1) Most textbooks have already been published - and publication has typically entailed a pretty good measure of quality control. Publishers, particularly academic ones, have established reputations based on their "list", or cadre of published authors. Thus, if you read a book published by Little, Brown, for instance, you know that the book has been vetted by Little, Brown and has been found to measure up to their standards of publication. (This is no different than the review process that academic journals maintain, of course - and may be one reason why online (or non peer-reviewed) journals have been relatively slow to gain acceptance in the academic world.)

(2) Published textbook authors are for the most part affiliated with traditional institutions. If I use "Securities Regulation" by Seligman, for instance, I know that I can easily find Seligman's credentials - particularly his affiliation with top law schools and top flight legal background. There is another instance of implicit, but real, quality control: his credentials inform me of his aptitude for writing (wonderfully, I might add) about the given subject matter.

(3) Again, as I have indicated, institutional accreditation serves as a proxy of sorts for such assessments of quality. Thus, to use the Seligman example again, I can be assured that the dean of Washington Law School is very, very likely to be putting out a textbook on which I, as an academic, can rely. Quality is not an issue - but the institutional link helps secure that fact.

The conclusion I have to draw is this: textbooks, as currently produced, have already undergone a process of quality control. But what happens in the case of "outsourced" materials that are not created by recognized faculty, reviewed by outside bodies such as publishers or peer review bodies, affiliated with established institutions, or otherwise subject to some means of external evaluation that involves real standards and controls?

A textbook (published by a legitimate publishing house) is hardly comparable to a set of course materials prepared by an unaccredited distance learning provider, wouldn't you say?

And if that is the case, aren't you even a bit concerned about "importing" materials without considering the source, and without having in place the "quality control" practices that might evaluate their utility, value and long-term worth?

(Name removed at author's request)

John Garner wrote:

"If I am not mistaken, this principle of "outsourcing" involves pedological techniques more than content. As such content becomes a filler for an instructional delivery method.

I am not sure that I understand your point, Lisa. Could you pease clarify it for me?"

I'll certainly try.

The outsourcing involves content far more than pedagogical techniques. Sometimes the actual lectures are provided, either in outline form, or as complete lectures, with the supporting content needed for a complete course. The course content industry sometimes calls this kind of supporting content "collaterals," meaning paper topics, quizzes, and exams. In some cases, the content is aptly described as a "course in a box."

Having been in the position of converting faculty content for online use, ranging from syllabi to handouts to entire lectures, I realize that rights issues are delicate matters involving the content creator or faculty member(s) and the institution who hires them. Faculty often have very specific contractual rights and obligations (Please note that I'm deftly side-stepping the swamp of graduate student/apprentice personnel rights).

Were a publisher to take a handout from a class that shows Sidney's sources for the Defense of Poesy, and also the classical oration structure that lies behind it, a handout created by teacher for use in her classes, and sell it as part of a "course packet" for use at other schools, that teacher has rights to the chart, ethically and legally. I am aware that sometimes those rights are not acknowledged. Personally, as a potential consumer, I want to know who created the content--there are some teachers' whose materials are very much worth licensing--and I'd want to know that those teachers were paid for their work.

A key criteria of an effective curriculum is the extent to which it promotes student learning. A quality curriculum is an engaging and empowering one. Can an outsourced course curriculum be that?

There is no reason to believe that all college alegebra courses need to be created from scratch, or that faculty do not consult what their peers are doing before creating their own course curriculum. These are (we hope) adaptive processes wherein the teacher shapes the course to the students' needs, interests and abilities. Outsourcing presumably takes the course at face value as an adoption (not an adaptation) and asks a faculty member to teach to it. This may be similar to the situation where senior faculty construct the course outline, syllabus and text, and then ask part-time faculty and instructors to teach to it. I know of little evidence to suggest that such practices are less effective.

Perhaps as important to the question is the fit of the course with the purpose of the program. At many community colleges, the majority of students are enrolled for the course as part-time students, and so its fits with other courses into a coherent program of study becomes less of an issue. However, if the course is part of a program -- and students select colleges on the basis of programs more than courses -- then the extent to which the course fulfills or contributes to one or more goals of the program is key. Again, analogies come to mind: transfer courses taken at another institution, advanced placement courses, and many distance learning courses. Because these may provide the student with an efficiency of time, cost or place does not alone assure that they have the same quality or calibre or fit with the students' needs, educational background and objectives.

In sum, the extent to which the course contributes to student learning in the program or programs to which it applies appears to be a fundamental criteria in determining whether outsources courses can be useful, viable and effective.

(Name removed at original author's request) wrote:

> And if that is the case, aren't you even a bit concerned
> about "importing" materials without considering the source, and
> without having in place the "quality control" practices that
> might evaluate their utility, value and long-term worth?

(Name removed at original author's request),

We approach this issue from opposite viewpoints.

You assume the quality is bad then reject the practice based on that assumption.

I assume a legitimate institution will guarantee high quality, and I embrace the content for its value.

A million dollar telecourse, a "designed" web or hybrid web / CD course, or a teacher's manual from a publisher are all tools for me to use to improve the quality of my teaching. As long as I have the freedom to "teach" the class, I welcome quality tools from anyone.

Terry

Terry Dugas
Adjunct Professor of Communications
Florida Gulf Coast University
http://www.crosscut.net
terry@crosscut.net

This wraps up the issue in a nutshell, I think. Education becomes a business and is no longer an intellectual pursuit. Let's forget having faculty or classes, let's just throw a bunch of stuff on the internet and let the "students" do what they will. We don't need human interaction, we don't even need human beings anymore. Surely we can develop a computer program that will generate course materials?? Online education may have some merit in particular circumstances, but as soon as we get involved in buying and selling course materials, we're removing the human element, the intellectual element and the educational element--it's all about making money, not spending time developing courses (hence not thinking about particular students) or even dealing with actual, live, human beings in a classroom. This all begs the question: what's the point?

Terry Dugas,

No. I do not start from the premise that "the quality is bad"; nor do I end by rejecting the practice.

I deliberately avoided passing judgment on the quality of materials generated, or for that matter the entities generating them. Indeed, it would be foolhardy to do so: course materials may be developed by many different entities, the legitimacy of which should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

What I do say is that there quality control mechanisms need to be put into place, both individually and collectively.

As you well know, the range of educational institutions is expanding tremendously. Some institutions currently operate without accreditation, external oversight, or visible accountability (other than, in the case of for-profits, to their shareholders). Some faculty who now teach, and generate materials, may not have earned the traditional hallmarks of academic legitimacy (degree, publication, teaching record, and so on). Moreover, transparency is limited: in the case of many online providers, we have little or no way of ascertaining the status of institutions and faculty alike.

Absent these legitimating factors - or any others proposed thus far - I am reluctant to assume that external materials will constitute "quality tools" to enhance the teaching endeavor. And I cannot assume that content-generating entities should continue to be unregulated, unreviewed, and unchecked in their dissemination of fundamental teaching materials.

(Name removed at author's request)

Would Alabama State be interested in talking with all Doctorate Level Instructional Designers who collegially want to develop for higher Education and would like to work with the Faculty regarding design and development startegies and courses, that would keep the competitive edge and NOT overload your present faculty?

Sincerely
David J Cadenhead

Outsourcing your course preparation to another college