Four Pioneering Universities Form an e-Learning Alliance

From the elearning news, Vol. III, Issue 4, February 15, 2001

Four universities with a long tradition in distance learning have formed an alliance to facilitate further development of their programs.

The University of California, Berkeley, University Extension; Penn State University's World Campus; the University of Washington; and the University of Wisconsin's Learning Innovations will share information and resources in an effort to improve their overall distance learning capabilities. The group is initially closed to further members.

"Our alliance was not formed for competitive reasons, it was more from a need for information sharing," explained Gary Matkin, the former Associate Dean at UC Berkeley (now Dean of Continuing Education at UC Irvine) who is coordinating the alliance effort. "Although we're not adding members, we're not a closed society in any sense. If we come up with some common ideas, we'll share those with the rest of the world."

The alliance evolved abut a year ago when the institutions were flooded with proposals from learning portals, and engaged in informal coordination and assessment of these proposals.

"As we began comparing notes, we found that we were all doing about the same thing, and other people were doing things differently than we were," Matkin elaborated. "We all have about the same number of online courses out there. We all have the same general philosophy on design and how much we would spend on design in a course: around $20—$40,000. We all have staff who are dedicated to creating courses. And we were all facing common problems, like what kind of technical infrastructure should we be using, and so forth."

Along with joint assessment of opportunities to collaborate with the private sector, the alliance will pursue benchmarking of institutional practices and standards, joint sales and marketing, and collaborative program development.

The group has no plans to pursue a consortium model, which would typically involve a higher level of integration and a common brand name for marketing purposes.

An inaugural meeting was held in Berkeley last December. Working groups have initiated a benchmarking process in marketing, instructional design and technology, and student services and academic program development will be added this spring.

One of the first topics under review is the important relationship between the distance learning program and its contributing faculty members. This includes intellectual property issues, workflow processes for course development, compensation, workload measures, and recruitment and retention.

Another key topic is agreement on technical infrastructure: the members today have a hodgepodge of incompatible course management systems, and they would like to adopt a common delivery platform if possible.

In the marketing area, the alliance members are looking to beef up their national and international marketing presence. Wisconsin's Dean of Continuing Education Michael Offerman said, "Most of us have great marketing plans for our regions, but we need to work together and with corporate partners to expand our efforts globally."

Matkin added, "I don't think there's a marketing outfit in the country that has demonstrated the ability to do the kind of marketing that we want done. Now since there is nobody, is it possible to create somebody? It's certainly not possible to create out of the inventory of any university's online efforts right now. There's just not enough product out there to have the critical mass for a national or international campaign. There may be in four universities with over 500 courses, if there was an outfit with a decent amount of financial backing and expertise, and that's what we're looking for."

The alliance has been formed in a climate where projections for the rapid spread of e-learning have not been realized, and companies and institutions have found it particularly difficult to attract individual learners.

"I think in general people aren't thinking now about 'world domination' the way that might have earlier on, and the way some universities are still thinking," Matkin commented. "I think the world conquerors looking for 85,000 students are going to run up against some problems, unless they have massive financing. The race to be first is no longer the goal; it's to stay in the race at a quality level that's going to be supported by institutions."

For more information about the alliance, contact Gary Matkin at gmatkin@uci.edu.