Monday, April 23, 2001

Union Publishes Guide Citing High Cost of Distance Education By SARAH CARR The National Education Association has issued a manual asserting that online instruction is almost always more expensive than traditional, in-person instruction. Officials at the association, the country's largest teachers' union, say they hope faculty members will use the manual in bargaining over distance-learning issues. The manual's pointed conclusions suggest that the union plans to take a tough line as universities expand into online learning. "It seems to me that it is in everyone's interest to take a hard and realistic look at what the costs are going to be as they venture into distance education," says Rachel Hendrickson, the association's higher-education coordinator and a contributor to the manual. The authors of the manual include Leroy Dubeck, a professor of physics at Temple University; James R. Duby, a lawyer for the association; and John Lee, a consultant. In a section comparing the costs of online and in-person courses, the authors write, "For small courses, in-person instruction will always be less expensive than instruction via the Internet." "I.T. instruction may certainly be helpful to students who need to time-shift their classes because of business or family commitment," they add. "It may also be helpful to students living in remote locations. However, I.T. should not be adopted 'to save money,' since it is not likely to achieve that goal." The association's researchers used a model created by Frank Jewett, an information-technology project director at the California State University System, as the basis for some of their analysis. Mr. Jewett writes in his report, "A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Classroom Instruction vis-a-vis Distributed Instruction," that for teaching small groups of students, traditional courses are cheaper than their online counterparts. He divides faculty time devoted to online courses into three categories: time spent on course preparation; time spent on course presentation; and time spent on "student related" activities, including grading and interaction. Relying on that breakdown, the authors of the N.E.A. manual plug in actual numbers from a government report to try to disprove the notion that colleges would save a lot on faculty salaries by shifting to online courses. The report, "Instructional Output and Faculty Salary Costs of the State Related and State-Owned Universities," is put out annually by the Joint State Government Commission. For a course that can be offered in just one section, for instance, the authors write that "the in-person class will be less costly than the I.T. course of comparable enrollment because both preparation time will be less for the in-person course, and delivery of instruction will also take less time in-person than interacting individually with 200 students each week via e-mail." Only in "really large courses" with many sections would cost savings be possible in an online format, according to the manual. Its authors suggest that such a course would need to have more than 500 students. The manual also offers an extended formula for college officials who want to explore specific I.T. costs at their own institutions. Robert Ubell, the director of Web-based distance learning at the Stevens Institute of Technology, says he worries that the association's findings are not broadly applicable. "They took some narrow existing studies, and it doesn't look like what they found can be extrapolated to distance learning in general." "I think it is necessary for them to guard against the exploitation of their faculty population," he adds. "But they should be careful about how they look at statistics to support evidence that may not be there." The manual has "the smell of Ludditism," Mr. Ubell says. "Their defense of teachers can also be seen as a defense against change." But the N.E.A.'s Ms. Hendrickson says the goal of the manual is simply to "frame the discussion" surrounding online learning on specific campuses. "There is going to be an administrator someplace who will say, 'I can tell you how you can do it cheaper.' But if you do distance education right and follow the principles of quality, it is not going to be cheap, and the main thing is to know that going into it." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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