Thursday, September 12, 2002

Faculty Union Seeks Agreement With U. of Massachusetts on Distance Courses By DAN CARNEVALE A faculty union wants to create a collective-bargaining agreement with the University of Massachusetts system to make sure its professors aren't overworked or underpaid when they venture into distance education. The university administration says it will go along with some of the union's proposals, but others will be subject to negotiation. Discussions are set to begin within two weeks, and both sides are optimistic that they can agree on policies that will encourage the growth of distance education and protect faculty rights. Tensions between state-college professors and administrators have been rising in Massachusetts. Last week, thousands of faculty and staff members at colleges in the state briefly walked off their jobs to stage rallies protesting a state decision not to pay for $29.6-million in salary increases that employees had been promised. (See an article from The Chronicle, September 6.) The negotiations over distance-education policies are a separate matter, says Ron Story, president of the Massachusetts Society of Professors, a statewide union. But he says the disagreement over the salary increase may help the distance-education policies get pushed through quickly. "We want to make sure that it is an incentive system rather than a coercion system to participate in distance education," Mr. Story says. "This is not necessarily to correct evils that are going on. We want to guard against them happening." Dirk Messelaar, dean of corporate, continuing, and distance education at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, will be participating in the negotiations and says many of the union's demands will be easily achieved. Administrators are willing to keep distance-education assignments voluntary for professors, and to let faculty members retain ownership and control of courses, just as the union wants. Professors are also already paid extra for developing and teaching online courses. The negotiators will develop a consistent formula for paying professors on the Amherst and Boston campuses. But other issues will be more difficult. For example, the union has asked the university to cap enrollments in online courses at 15 students, the same as in traditional courses. But Mr. Messelaar says the latest technology will allow professors to teach more students in an online course than in a traditional classroom. He plans to use the negotiations to inform professors, many of whom have no experience with distance education, that technology can open the door to new methods of teaching. "I see this more as a process that's going to dismiss some of the misunderstanding and myths surrounding distance education," Mr. Messelaar says. "A lot of times the faculty don't understand the pedagogical issues surrounding online learning." But Mr. Story says that quality education comes from small, interactive classes. Without a proper enrollment cap, he says, classes can become unmanageable. Mr. Story also wants to make sure that faculty members are not subject to electronic surveillance by the administration. In the traditional classroom, an administrator who sits in on a professor's lectures would be easily spotted. But with online courses, deans and vice presidents could monitor online discussions without the professor's being aware of it. The parties expect to finish negotiations by the end of the semester. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Across America, colleges remember September 11 UCLA biomedical program will heighten scrutiny of foreign applicants Campus unrest spurs Concordia U. in Montreal to ban campus activities on the Mideast Gardner-Webb U. president's aid to athlete results in no-confidence vote U.S. Education Dept. awards learning grants to 8 universities Faculty union seeks agreement with U. of Massachusetts on distance courses