Friday, June 23, 2000

Publishers Rush to Offer Distance-Education Information -- in Print By SARAH CARR As more and more distance-education programs become Web-based, it may seem natural for prospective distance-education students to look for information about courses and programs online. But the number of publishers offering or revising print guides to distance learning has soared in recent months. The publishers say they have watched the demand increase for any kind of information about distance-learning over the past year. Almost every bookstore has a plethora of choices for a student looking to explore less-traditional options for higher education. One quick scan of the shelves reveals such titles as A Guide to Distance Learning, Get Your Degree Online, and Traditional Degrees for Nontraditional Students. "All the publishers get on the same idea at the same time," says Shannon Turlington, the author of The Unofficial Guide to Distance Learning. "If someone has a distance-learning book coming out, everybody has to have a distance-learning book coming out." Ms. Turlington wrote her book last fall for the publishing company Arco. She says the guide is not a comprehensive listing of distance-learning programs. Instead, it includes only accredited, degree-granting programs. Unlike many guidebooks for four-year residential programs -- which primarily catalog offerings at different institutions -- Ms. Turlington devotes 100 pages to a discussion of topics like accreditation, the nuts and bolts of applying, and what characteristics make for successful distance-learning students. Pat Criscito, the author of Barron's Guide to Distance Learning, says she tried to include not only full degree programs, but also certificate programs and individual courses that students can take. Ms. Criscito, who did her research during the spring of 1999, says she held focus groups with current and potential distance-learning students to figure out what information they would find most useful. The most frustrating part of her research, Ms. Criscito says, was explaining to college officials what information she was looking for. "The first thing we would do was make a phone call, and ask, 'Do you have a distance-learning program?'" she says. "But we had to ask that in many different iterations because we got a lot of 'Huh? What's that?'" Ms. Criscito adds that "because of having to repeat questions to universities over and over again," her research team put in a considerable amount of overtime, and went $9,000 over budget. She will be updating the guide this fall, and is hoping that the process will go more smoothly this time around. If the experience of researchers at the Princeton Review is any indication, it very well might be an easier process for Ms. Criscito. The Princeton Review is currently updating a book titled The Best Distance Learning Graduate Programs. Evan R. Schnittman, the executive vice president of the Princeton Review, says universities are much more fluent in the language of distance learning than they were two years ago, when the company's first guide was written. "Now the schools know what we are talking about," he says. "We don't have to constantly qualify what we are asking for, and say, 'No, no, no, I'm not talking about your satellite program.' Now you mention distance learning, and it is like, boom, they know exactly what you are talking about." Students, too, have grown more knowledgeable, Mr. Schnittman says. "Click2learn, Blackboard -- these folks were just a glimmer in someone's eye two years ago. Now students have heard of these places, and they want comprehensiveness and choice, not handholding." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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