From the issue dated May 12, 2000

Jesuit Colleges Try to Bring Their Values to Online Education A new consortium's courses will feature ethics, public service, and small classes By BETH McMURTRIE Twenty-four of the country's 28 Jesuit colleges and universities have joined forces to offer online courses through a new network, JesuitNET. The consortium, formally known as the Jesuit Distance Education Network, began as a way to pool resources and attract students, but its success may rest on whether the Jesuit style of education -- which emphasizes personal instruction and attention to ethical issues -- can translate into cyberspace. "We're trying to take the values we profess in our more traditional learning and put them Members of JesuitNET Boston College Creighton University Fairfield University Fordham University Georgetown University Gonzaga University John Carroll University Le Moyne College Loyola Marymount University Loyola University Chicago Loyola University New Orleans Marquette University Regis University Rockhurst University Saint Joseph's University Saint Louis University Saint Peter's College Santa Clara University Spring Hill College University of Detroit Mercy University of San Francisco University of Scranton Wheeling Jesuit University Xavier University (Ohio) SOURCE: Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in appropriate ways into our online courses," says the Rev. Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, which has been the organizing force behind JesuitNET. "We realize online learning is not the appropriate thing for everybody, but it's appropriate for us because Jesuit education has always been student-centered, and we're looking for ways to reach additional students." Unlike some other distance-education consortia, such as Western Governors University, JesuitNET will not offer degrees. Instead, the network, which will be up and running this fall, will act as a Web portal (http://www.ajcunet.edu/jnet/jnet.htm) for participating colleges to market their online programs and create new ventures with other Jesuit campuses. Participants include Boston College, Fordham and Georgetown Universities, and Loyola University of Chicago. JesuitNET may eventually expand to include some of the 78 Jesuit colleges outside the United States. Each institution will have full control over the courses it designs and offers online, but all are expected to incorporate attributes that define the ideal Jesuit education: personal instruction, strong faculty support, academic rigor, service, and ethics. JesuitNET's executive director, Richard Vigilante, says such qualities can help put JesuitNET ahead of the pack. Too many online courses take a checklist approach to participation, he says, instead of engaging students in the material. "Some classes say, 'Log on three times a week.'" he notes. "What does that mean?" JesuitNET members say they'll avoid the pitfalls of online education through intensive planning. Professors will build ethical issues and service requirements into the curriculum. Students will be told up front how much time and effort are expected of them. Class sizes will remain small. And departments will add "office hours" to the instructors' workloads to ensure that they are available to their online students. Michael Neuman, associate director of university information services at Georgetown, believes attention to ethics is the main selling point of JesuitNET. Georgetown is already talking about developing online versions of programs offered through its Kennedy Institute of Ethics, such as summer bioethics courses for high-school teachers. Mr. Neuman says he thinks the Kennedy Institute could also provide a valuable service by placing some of its materials online as a resource for professors on other Jesuit campuses. JesuitNET's emphasis on the teacher-student relationship offers another advantage, says Mr. Vigilante, the former head of New York University's Information Technologies Institute. With small classes, students will be expected to participate actively "Online instruction is not for everybody," Mr. Vigilante says. "A good, high-quality online interactive course is basically a seminar. That means everyone has to come prepared." The most tricky component to add to an online course may be the service requirement, because it's such a new concept. But now that computers are appearing everywhere from nursing homes to community centers, JesuitNET members say the idea of volunteering online isn't as odd as it sounds. Loyola University of Chicago, which offers an online certificate in computer science, has already taken an informal stab at it. One set of students, who were enrolled at the University of Sarajevo, agreed to offer their fellow students programming and Internet training free. Service-learning requirements will also be built into courses developed with the help of the JesuitNET staff. Boston College, Fordham, and the University of San Francisco plan to create online versions of some of their graduate courses on parochial-school administration, to be offered to students at other Jesuit graduate schools. To incorporate a service requirement into the course work, Mr. Vigilante says, professors may require students to develop online training programs for teachers and administrators at inner-city and rural schools. Courses created collaboratively will be different in one key respect, however. They will be offered under the authority of the institutions that choose to participate. In the case of the classes in parochial-school administration, for example, Boston College could create and operate an online version of the course, then other interested Jesuit institutions could offer it as part of their educational-administration programs. The universities would pay Boston College a fee calculated by JesuitNET staff members, then charge standard tuition for the course. Jesuit colleges hold strongly to the liberal-arts tradition, Mr. Vigilante notes. They would rather have 18-year-old students in their classrooms, developing their social and intellectual skills among fellow students, than let them sit home alone, communicating through cyberspace. So for now, JesuitNET members are focusing on developing graduate-level courses. "There's a very clear separation between the traditional-age, liberal-arts undergraduate student and everybody else," says Mr. Vigilante. "And it's the everybody else -- adult students, part-timers, graduate students -- for whom they think [online education] is fine." Even so, JesuitNET members remain cautious. The group's initial ventures, such as a nursing-school consortium that is developing some online courses, are aimed at students who take most of their classes on a campus. Most Jesuit colleges are not yet ready or willing to offer entire degrees through the Internet. The institutions participating in JesuitNET have a wide range of experience in online education. Some, like Boston College and Georgetown, do not yet offer any online courses, although the Jesuit order at Georgetown recently donated $50,000 to create some online theology classes. At the other end of the spectrum is Regis University, which offers an undergraduate-degree-completion program in business administration, an M.B.A., a master's degree in nonprofit management, and a master's in computer information systems. William J. Husson, dean of the School for Professional Studies at Regis, estimates that 1,500 degree-seeking students have enrolled in online courses this academic year. He credits the program's success to close faculty-student interaction. Regis limits class sizes to 15, and faculty members are expected to get to know their students as fully as if they were in the same classroom. "There's a term used in Jesuit education called cura personalis -- care of the person -- and we try to reflect that in all of the classes online," Mr. Husson says. The four Jesuit colleges that chose not to participate in JesuitNET either don't offer many adult-education courses or felt that online education was not a priority for them, says Mr. Vigilante. The institutions in JesuitNET plan to market their programs aggressively to Jesuit-college students and alumni. Beyond that, officials admit, it may take some effort to persuade people unfamiliar with Jesuit education of the value of their courses, which cost, on average, $500 per credit. "Convincing students there is merit and value to this is similar to convincing students that there is merit and value to courses on our campuses," says Stephen Freedman, dean of Mundelein College at Loyola. "But I think there is an understanding among online classes now that you get what you pay for." Mr. Vigilante is convinced that portals like JesuitNET's are the future of distance-education marketing. The consortium has a startup budget of $840,000 drawn from its members. It will not charge fees to students who use the portal to shop for courses, but instead will seek outside funds from foundations and government programs. The operation of the consortium will be highly decentralized, with individual institutions making their own decisions on intellectual-property rights to course content, tuition rates, and the like. So far, all of the participating institutions charge the same for their online courses as they do for traditional ones, but the colleges are free to set whatever rates they want. The group's self-described strengths may also make it difficult to market, however. Because each institution has full control over its courses, there is little consistency among the programs they have developed so far. Loyola, for example, insists on using only full-time faculty members to ensure high-quality instruction. Regis, on the other hand, is comfortable using part-timers, although Mr. Husson says they screen applicants closely to make sure they understand and support the institution's Jesuit character and are interested in a long-term relationship with the university. Intellectual-property policies also vary from campus to campus. Regis uses a work-for-hire model. Some faculty members are paid to create an online curriculum, and others are hired to teach it. Regis owns the content. At Loyola, the material is considered the property of the faculty member who created it. The University of Scranton, which, like most JesuitNET members, does not yet have a policy on distance learning, may work out ownership agreements on a case-by-case basis. Father Currie, of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, says JesuitNET prefers to allow member institutions to develop programs and policies at their own pace. "It would be naive to put together a rigid master plan," he says. "We're trying to make this as much of a bottom-up operation as top-down. That's one way to get people to participate." http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A45 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article