e-Education Updates by Bob Jensen

Whoever it was that first hit on the notion of a university and proposed that a public institution of this kind be established, it was not a bad idea to handle the entire content of learning (really, the thinkers devoted to it) by mass production, so to speak-by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee, and all of these together would form a kind of learned community called a university (or higher school). The university would have a certain autonomy (since only scholars can pass judgment on scholars as such) and accordingly it would be authorized to perform certain functions through its faculties.
Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, published in 1798 --- See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm
Jensen Comment: In the 21st Century, the really first "mass production" will take place in an era of online competition among corporations and traditional universities seeking to compete in the networked and globally-connected world.

Clayton Christensen has revolutionized how the world sees innovation. Established companies, he discovered, pursue innovations that support their existing business models --- a practice that blinds them to radical innovations --- ones that often come from out of the same blue. His longtime study of sustaining versus disruptive technologies has exploded in popularity as a way of interpreting this era of dizzying change.
Thomas Petzinger, Jr. in "Innovation in the Connected Economy: A Conversation with Clayton Christensen," Perspectives on Business Innovation, Issue 5, September 2000, 6-12 at http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/journal/loader.html
Jensen Comment: Many university administrators and faculties think that sustaining technologies (electronic classrooms and other technology aids for onsite learning) are enough for now. By avoiding disruptive change, they will be ground up for Mike Milken's lunch.

You guys (traditional colleges) are in trouble and we are going to eat your lunch.
Mike Milken as quoted by Mark Taylor in "Useful Devils," Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html
Jensen Comment: What Milken means by "we" is the commercialization of education at all levels (most notably higher education) in online delivery of both training and education courses in both synchronous and asynchronous modes.

Change is never easy and always threatening. Yet change is what keeps institutions as well as people alive. Unfortunately, no institution is more resistant to change than the college and university. Perhaps it has always been so, but now time seems to be running out. If colleges and universities do not overcome their smug satisfaction with how they do business, the Michael Milkens of the world will indeed eat their lunch. The challenge that educators face is to turn the useful devils of business and technology to their own ends. If usefulness is a devil, it’s a devil we must learn to dance with or educational institutions will become more obsolete than they already are. This is neither a threat nor an ultimatum; it is just a fact—a brute fact. And it’s time to face this fact directly and honestly.
"Useful Devils," by Mark C. Taylor, Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html

Even though a shakeout period for e-business is underway, it is clear that the structure of business has been radically altered and that business as usual will never be usual again. Will change be as permanent in higher education? Yes. All signs indicate that we are on a path to creating a new education" analogous to the "new economy." The reasons are obvious. Education is simply too important and our existing methods of delivering it are too expensive, time-consuming, and constrained by established practice not to invite competition. And the new commutations and computer technologies make competition possible --- actually inevitable.
G.C. Farrington and R.K. Yoshida, Educause Review, November/December, 2000

Let’s start with a simple definition, and then explore some of the variations of portals. At the most basic level, portals gather a variety of useful information resources into a single, “one-stop” Web page, helping the user to avoid being overwhelmed by “infoglut” or feeling lost on the Web. But since no two people have the same interests, portals allow users to customize their information sources by selecting and viewing only the information they find personally useful. Some portals also let you personalize your portal by including private information (such as your stock portfolio or checking account balance). Put simply, an institution’s portal is designed to make an individual’s Web experience more efficient and thereby make the institution as a whole more productive and responsive.
"Portals in Higher Education," by Michael Looney and Peter Lyman, Educause Review, July/August 2000 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm00/erm004.html

Fathom users will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with the leading experts in their field. Fathom's unique architecture will provide a powerful "search and explore capability" that will allow users to follow their interests, independently or with expert guidance, across the widest possible range of subjects.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/00/04/fathom.html
For more about knowledge portals, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/portals.htm

Perhaps it is the accountant in me, but when operational revenue grows by over $100 million in just a few years in any university, I take notice! What is becoming clear to me as prestige universities go online is that the revenue potential is a (probably "the") driving force. What amazed me in some discussions that I had in Philadelphia last week is how profitable the online programs are becoming to universities with top brand names. For example, in Stanford's online engineering and computer science training and education courses (you can get a prestigious and asynchronous Masters of Engineering degree online from Stanford) the online revenues exceed $100 million. At Columbia University the numbers are in the same $100 million ballpark from online operations. What is even more important is that the mature mission (traditional onsite education) in these universities will have very limited revenue growth whereas the newer online mission has unbounded growth potential. The cash cows from newer online programs are already feeding new developments and partnerings such as the amazing Fathom knowledge portal at Columbia University.

Clearly, onsite faculty cannot deliver credit courses to thousands or millions of students worldwide. The growth models vary, but the leading model entails having the university do the following things:

Two types of corporations are being formed for corporate course delivery. One type entails a venture corporation commenced by a university (I think you can now buy stock in Duke's new corporation). The other type entails partnering with a wide-reaching existing corporation such as UNext (that now owns an accredited university called Cardean). You can read more about such happenings at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm#Prestige (By the way, the Columbia University professor (Michael Kirschenheiter) who developed Columbia's UNext online course and an executive (Steve Orpurt) from UNext who presented modules in my Philadelphia workshops convinced me that UNext is a quality operation at this early point in time.)

**Columbia University's Michael Kirschenheiter Audio Clips**
Working with UNext to develop a Columbia University course	Click Here for MP3 Audio
Problem Based Learning and course testing process	Click Here for MP3 Audio
Why prestige universities & faculty want to go online	Click Here for MP3 Audio
Columbia owns the course & must maintain academic standards	Click Here for MP3 Audio

For more on this, download Professor Kirschenheiter's complete audio and presentation files. You can download (for free) nearly six hours of MP3 audio and the PowerPoint presentation slides of one of the best education technology workshops that I ever organized. This was the pre-convention workshop that I organized for the American Accounting Association, August 12, 2000 in Philadelphia. The speakers, topics, and download instructions are given at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

Question 01
What has been the "business model" of traditional universities and what were their comparative advantages using this model?

Question 02a
What traditional comparative advantages are plunging or fading in the 21st Century?

Question 03
Even though online education alternatives are exploding, isn't the learning and communication inferior to onsite learning in traditional face-to-face classrooms?

I recommend "Technology, Higher Education, and a Very Foggy Crystal Ball," by Brian L. Hawkins, Educause Review, November/December, pp. 65-73.

The New Market Will Be Smaller Than Often Predicted.
Excerpt:
Some studies have suggested that more than 128 million new FTEs will be added to the market, in addition to the roughly 4 million additional FTEs entering traditional forms of higher education. Although these numbers would tempt any entrepreneur, they contain assumptions that may exaggerate the "real" size of the marketplace. For example, part of the 100 million non-U.S.-based potential FTEs will not want a curriculum presented in English. While some of the subject matter will transcend language, other elements will not. There also may be significant cultural challenges. How effectively will a U.S.-based curriculum enable residents of India or Africa to master computer skills?

Jensen Comment:
Hawkins does not mention it, but there will also be an added problem for corporations and colleges trying to expand online fee-based training and education programs. Free knowledge on the web will cut into the demand for pay sites. For example, the many free sites listed at LibrarySpot ( http://www.libraryspot.com/ ) have struck a heavy blow on companies attempting to sell encyclopedias, thesauri, dictionaries, almanacs, etc. Universities may become their own worst enemies. What will have a heavy impact on education providers will be free knowledge portals such a Columbia's Fathom portal that will provide free tutorials, highest quality drill down tutorials, and very easy-to-find tutorials on a vast array of knowledge. See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/portals.htm
Residential Campuses Will Still Be Significant.
Excerpt:
In discussions about distributed education, people often draw the erroneous conclusion that residential education is doomed to a downward spiral. However, significant erosion of residential education is actually quite unlikely, for two reasons. First, residential education works. It is a highly successful formative experience, proven in its ability to move late adolescents across the transom to intellectual and emotional maturity. Once a "safe haven" available only to the elite, residential higher education has become increasingly accessible over the last fifty years. The trend is toward more inclusion, not away from it, and this is good. Residential education provides young people the opportunity to experiment and to explore various academic directions. It produces positive outcomes in the long run for the students and society. Whereas this argument can be applied to nontraditional students as well, it is particularly appropriate for the 18-to-22 year-old population.

Jensen Comment
Hawkins fails to put growth into perspective. Even though onsite education is growing, its growth potential is miniscule compared with the growth potential of online education. At Stanford University, the growth of online revenues in just a few years soared from zero to over $100 million from very limited online experiments in online delivery. Columbia University has had similar online cash flows. Onsite campus revenue growth in those universities pale in comparison with the billions of dollars those universities will be receiving from online distance training and education operations in the 21st Century.
An Erosion of Traditional Markets Will Occur.
Excerpt:
The most cost-effective departments offer large lecture courses, have minimal library needs, and use high numbers of adjunct faculty. With low overhead, significant net revenues are possible. This paradigm is especially evident in schools and colleges of business, and business students are precisely the target market that many of the for-profit competitors are seeking to develop and attract. This is important because profitable programs are used to subsidize unprofitable ones, helping the college or university achieve its balanced mission of offering courses in a broad spectrum of disciplines.

The economics of cross-subsidization are not well understood by most members of the campus community. However, mastering these concepts is essential for coherent planning regarding distributed learning programs. If a proprietary program, such as an asynchronous business program, begins to significantly erode the enrollments of a given institution's residential program, it will also negatively affect the cross-subsidized economics of other disciplinary units. This is a particular problem if courses on the network become commodities, resulting in extremely low-cost, academically acceptable course alternatives. Furthermore, depending on the pricing structure, an institution's new distributed learning program may also destabilize the economic models that a college or university uses to operate in a prudent manner. The point here is that both internal and external distributed learning efforts may affect the entire economy of the institution.
Institutions Will Not Effectively Participate as Stand-Alone Entities.
Excerpt:
Those in higher education have long assumed that not-for-profit educational efforts result in a higher-quality product than commercial efforts. Yet institutions need to throw off their defensiveness, question this assumption, and embrace the fact that combined for-profit and traditional institutional partnerships may be some of the most successful models for creating and delivering these new learning environments.

Can higher education learn to effectively "partner" with other not-for-profit and with for-profit ventures? Its track record so far is not good. Effective online learning models will rely heavily on collaboration and coordination with external entities. If higher education develops that ability, new opportunities and new leveraging will result, increasing the likelihood of success. Yet the jury is still out on whether our institutions can develop these skills. We may continue to bungle along, to our collective long-term detriment.

Jensen Comment:

What Hawkins does not point out is that universities do not necessarily have to partner with corporations in order to raise capital for online programs. Both Columbia University and Duke University have formed for-profit corporations for online delivery of education under the extended logos of the not-for-profit onsite counterparts. For example, Duke University formed the Duke Education Corporation. This is a for-profit company that can sell stock to the public and tap the world capital markets for growth fund.

Also Hawkins did not stress at this point is the tremendous impact brand name (logo) will have upon success or failure of education programs of the 21st Century. Prior to the 21st Century, geographic location overcame much of the importance of brand name (logo) on a diploma. Most students could not be accepted into the top brand (e.g., Ivy League schools and top liberal arts colleges) or they could not afford the tuition and on-campus living expenses.

In the 21st Century, students may stay at home and take distance education (synchronous and asynchronous) in their homes across the world. Geographic comparative advantage will shrink and shrink and shrink. More importantly, excellent students who could not be accepted as onsite students in prestige universities (due to lack of financing and constraints as to how many can fit into onsite classrooms) face new opportunities to get a prestige degree in their own homes. Stanford's ADEPT online Masters of Engineering Degree (asynchronous) and Duke's online Global MBA (synchronous) have already provided thousands of students with prestigious diplomas. Those graduates did not have to attend classes on campus, and their diplomas have the same branded quality as onsite program diplomas.

Whereas an unknown Microsoft could surpass the prestigious IBM software products, this will not be so easy for upstart education corporations. Software customers can make decisions on what the software does for them. Education customers, however, must be more concerned about how the outside world views the prestige of their diplomas. An online degree from the hypothetical UpNext Corporation may be of higher quality than a Columbia University degree in a given field, but the world will place greater emphasis on the brand name of Columbia University on the diploma. As a result, UpNext Corporation may pay millions to partner with a prestige university with the main purpose of buying into the logo on the diploma.

Two websites of interest along these lines are as follows:

       http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm

       http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm
       (with nearly six hours of audio)

The major problem faced by prestige universities entering into online ventures lies in deciding how many students to admit into online programs. Probably the most important ingredient in both obtaining and maintaining prestige is selectivity of admissions among the best students of the world. Prestigious universities can expand into online markets and maintain prestige only as long as admissions remain highly selective. For example, the online ADEPT Masters of Engineering Degree at Stanford University has high admission standards consistent with its onsite admissions standards. The Global Executive MBA Degree at Duke University is very selective when evaluating candidates from around the world.   If these programs partnered with a (hypothetical) UpNext Corporation to deliver these degree programs to over one million students worldwide, the prestige of the degrees and the universities would suffer due to less selective admissions.

Neither on a stand-alone basis nor in partnership with educational delivery corporations can highest prestige be maintained without selective online program admissions consistent with elitist traditions of the onsite campus programs. Perhaps this is why prestigious universities such as Stanford University have tended to focus more on online training courses (especially in computer engineering and computer science) rather than courses granting degree credits. Stanford is presently delivering online training courses with much less rigorous admission standards than the admission standards for both online and onsite education courses.
There Will Be a Significant Market Shakeout.
Excerpt:
Ultimately, the shakeout in distributed learning will be driven by the marketplace. Although many traditional institutions continue to believe they will be the "net providers" of these courses, eventually they will realize the need to become the "net purchasers." Only after colleges and universities realize that there will be no untold riches coming from this new set of educational ventures will higher education institutions start to make decisions on the price and quality of these courses and on the leverage they provide. Ultimately, these market factors will define the market shakeout in distributed learning.
New Extra-Institutional Solutions Will Likely Be Required.
Excerpt:
Can a distributed learning "business" operate effectively within the confines of the traditional college or university given the current faculty governance model? Conversely, can our current faculty governance model work in the new market environment? The answer is "no": successful distributed learning programs will require a more dynamic, more flexible governance model. It is highly unlikely that a model bolted on to our existing structures would be able to achieve the flexibility, nimbleness, and responsiveness that these new business models may require.
The New Marketplace Will Be Associated with New Models of Faculty Motivation.
Excerpt:
Attracting and motivating a new breed of entrepreneurial faculty is likely to be an important challenge. Some faculty will undoubtedly be willing to trade the security and assurances associated with a tenured position for greater economic opportunities and pay-offs. If they don't find these options within the academy, they will seek them in the dot-com world. A wide variety of employment models for faculty recruitment and retention may well be required, but such an approach will be difficult, if not impossible, within the confines of traditional faculty governance and the rather singular set of employment rules at most institutions.

Although the focus here is on courses offered to students at a distance, the issues apply equally to the traditional campus environment, where faculty need to change their teaching methods to relate to the new learning styles of today's students. The economics associated with implementing a campus-wide faculty support infrastructure, including course-management systems, are daunting. Those higher education institutions that are able to quickly devise new conventions for faculty support will have the more felicitous economic position in this changing era of higher education. Once again, the question turns on the degree of flexibility and adaptability that colleges and universities can develop.

Jensen Comment:
One of the emerging problems will be the changing needs for funding of basic research. Major research universities have tended to subsidize basic research from teaching revenues, especially in disciplines outside the hard sciences. Much of the basic research of the world depends upon such subsidies since corporations tend to fund mainly applied research.

Persons with research credentials and skills generally receive high (usually highest) rewards possible by focusing on basic research in universities. Thriving online education corporations may one day change the reward structures for both money and life style to where the best and brightest faculty can receive much higher salaries, stock options, and benefits by focusing on teaching and the development of online knowledge bases as opposed to basic research. For example, an online instructor will not have to commute to work. He or she may work from a mountain top in Colorado, a chalet in Switzerland, or an island off the coast of Maine. Universities themselves may begin to challenge the benefits and cost of basic research. In the past, benefits of basic research were mainly measured in terms of leading journal hits. In the future, administrators may begin to question what the net benefit to the university really is from journal hits that are not in some way more directly associated with the teaching mission of the institution. It may well be that new ways of funding basic research will have to be found, especially in disciplines where basic research is not funded by either the government or the private sector. And the funding will have to be significant to compete for talent with the online corporate education world.

A related issue is the importance of the traditional PhD degree. PhD programs focus on research skills. In the 21st Century, we may see the emergence of some type of advanced degree such as CaEE depicting a certified area of educational expertise. For selected types of online education, a CaEE may eventually be rewarded more than a PhD diploma. For example, having a CaEE in international taxation may be more important for online international tax teaching than a PhD in tax research. If the laws of supply and demand prevail on reward structures, a CaEE may be in very short supply relative to demand among online education corporations and universities. This, in turn, might induce the brightest students to seek after a CaEE rather than a PhD credential, and in the loss of the best students may degrade the quality of basic research.
The Technology Will Transform College and University Operations.
Excerpt:
If such networked communication devices become as important as many predict, a new question arises. Will that new generation of technology help reduce the digital divide that we are currently experiencing (and seeing widen) in our society, or will the new technology widen the divide even further? If the technology becomes ubiquitous, and if these other technological changes occur as well, the fundamental operations and the available learning will reshape the "face" of higher education for an ever-larger segment of our society.
The Necessary Library Infrastructure Will Be Missing.
Excerpt:
How can colleges and universities provide access to a sufficiently rich and comprehensive body of electronic resources in this distributed environment? Many institutions have developed initial approaches to offering courses over the Internet, but few, if any, have defined a scalable and viable strategy for making "library" resources available to "distant" learners. The provision of electronic links to appropriate course-supporting materials has been left to individual faculty members (and, indeed, to the students enrolled in the courses), none of whom have access to the types of services provided by librariesin the traditional campus setting. Moreover, providing electronic access is extremely difficult under current copyright limitations, which require closed access, key servers, or other restrictions. The new Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has all but erased the issue of fair use. As a result, defining a strategy, in a distributed learning environment, to provide students with adequate access to primary source material is unclear at best.

Jensen Comment:
This is one of the major obstacles to many online programs, especially with unique library collections that cannot be viewed at any place other than onsite at a particular library. Often, however, some collections such as rare books can legally be viewed via document cameras. This prevents damage to rare books and makes it easier to view such books remotely.

The major common problem lies in hard copy documents that cannot be distributed to multiple users across networks due to copyright restrictions. This problem can be solved in some ways. Copyright restrictions cannot prevent inter-library loan checkout services, and such services may become more widespread and efficient. Important items can be shipped overnight. Napster-like sharing of hard copy may become widespread where owners of copyrighted documents more willingly share these documents.

In the U.S., students and faculty can obtain one photocopy of journal articles using inter-library loan services. Most "card catalog" collections of libraries can now be viewed electronically to help students browse for documents to be requested via inter-library loan.

Increasingly publishers allow copyrighted books and journals to be distributed in digital form at greatly reduced prices. WizeUp sells the leading textbooks of the major publishing houses in electronic form at "prices below the cost of used books." Special devices like the Rocket e-Book, the SoftBook, and the Everybook afford publishers greater copying protections than hardcopy. For more information on these products and companies like WizeUp, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm.

Librarians themselves will play a larger role in overcoming problems of infrastructure. One example of this is at University of Maryland University College where students can "chat" with librarians online and ask any questions they might have. Librarians will have to be proactive and learn about the new technologies and make the materials available to students all over the world.
There Will Be an Increase in Institutional Market Segmentation.
Except:
The higher education enterprise will be fundamentally different in the next decade or so, with much greater segmentation in the market than we currently find. For the past several decades, higher education has made an almost inexorable march toward homogeneity, with the vast majority of institutions trying to climb up the "food chain" defined by the Carnegie classifications. But even as the new technology has created greater possibilities for advancing teaching and learning, higher education has continued to focus on increasing the research agenda. Institutions will need to be far more selective in choosing content areas to focus on and will need to compete for that intellectual space in a much more aggressive manner.

AOAE has a relatively long list accredited programs, including some major colleges and universities.
Association for Online Excellence

Question: What major publishing company is seeking full accreditation of its corporate university?
Click here for the answer!

Judith Boettcher in Syllabus, June 1999, 18-24 Judith Boettcher is affiliated with CREN. She predicts the following scenarios (which appear to be heavily in line with the emerging WGU programs mentioned above):

An abstract from On the Horizon http://horizon.unc.edu/horizon/online/login.asp
Will Universities Be Relics? What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object? John W. Hibbs

**Time Frame and Feasibility for Technology Acquisition**
"Advanced Technologies and Distributed Learning," by Chris Dede,
*Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition* Edited by D.E. Hanna (Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing, IBN 1-891859-32-3, 2000, pp. 73-74)
Functionality	Uses	Time Frame
Hypermedia (nonlinear traversal of multimedia information)	Interlinking of diverse subject matter; easier conceptual exploration; multiple simultaneous representations for learning	Current
Cognitive audit trails (automatic recording of user actions)	Support for finding patterns of sub-optimal performance	Current
Computer-supported cooperative work (design, problem solving, decision support)	Facilitation of team task performance	Current
Intelligent tutors and coaches for restricted domains	Models of embedded expertise for greater individualization	Current
Optical-disc systems with multiple read/write and mixed media capabilities	Support of large data-bases; cheap secondary storage; shared distributed virtual environments	Current
Standardization of computer and telecommunications protocols	Easy connectivity, compatibility; lower costs	Current
User-specific, limited vocabulary voice recognition	Restricted natural language input	Current
High-quality voice synthesis	Auditor natural language output	Current
Sophisticated authoring and user interface management systems	Easier development of applications; reduced time for novices to master a program	Current
Widespread, high-bandwidth, fiber optic networks	Massive real-time data exchange	3-5 years
Fusion of computers, telecommunications	Easy interconnection; universal "information appliances"	3-5 years
Information "utilities" (synthesis of media, databases, and communications)	Access to integrated sources of data and tools for assimilation	3-5 years
Microworlds (limited alternate realities with user control over rules)	Experience in applying theoretical information in practical situations	3-5 years
Semi-intelligent computational agents embedded in applications	Support for user-defined independent actions	5-7 years
Advanced manipulatory input devices (e.g., gesture gloves with tactile feedback)	Mimetic learning that builds on real-world experience	5-7 years
Artificial realities (immersive, multi-sensory virtual worlds)	Intensely motivating simulation and virtual experience	7-10years
"Information appliance" performance equivalent to current supercomputers	Sufficient power for simultaneous advanced functionalities	7-10 years
Consciousness sensors (input of user biofeedback into computer)	Monitoring of mood, state of mind	7-10 years
Artifacts with embedded semi-intelligence and wireless interconnections	Inclusion of smart devices in real-world settings	2010+

Higher Education in an Era of Digital Competition Edited by D.E. Hanna (Madison, WI: Atwood Publishing, IBN 1-891859-32-3, 2000).

Michael G. Dolence and Donald M. Norris, Transforming Higher Education: A Vision for Learning in the 21st Century (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Society for College and University Planning, 1995); William B. Johnston, "Global Workforce 2000: The New World Labor Market," Harvard Business Review (March/April 1991).

James J. Duderstadt, "Can Colleges and Universities Survive in the Information Age?" in Richard N. Katz, ed., Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999), 1-25.

147 Practical Tips for Teaching Online Groups: Essentials of Web-Based Education, by Donald E. Hanna, Michelle Glowacki-Dudka, and Simone Conceicao-Runlee [Overland Park, KS: Atwood Publishing, 2000. ISBN: 189185934X, $12.50 US], is a "how-to guide for college professors, schoolteachers, and workplace educators." Drawing upon their extensive experience in educational communications and instructional design and technology, the authors "describe the reasonable expectations that professors should have of their students; copyright issues that pertain to course content; ways of interacting with students, like bulletin boards and shared documents; and methods of evaluating students online, including portfolios and peer assessments." They also debunk some myths of online teaching regarding time requirements, number of students an instructor can handle, and the reliability of the technology. A review of the book is available online at http://chronicle.com/teaching/books/2000091101b.htm

If you are interested in technology trends, and in particular macro strategies and the broad impact of technologies on business, finance, accounting, and economics, a must see website is http://www.businessinnovation.ey.com/

You can download (for free) nearly six hours of MP3 audio and the PowerPoint presentation slides of one of the best education technology workshops that I ever organized. This was the pre-convention workshop that I organized for the American Accounting Association, August 12, 2000 in Philadelphia. The speakers, topics, and download instructions are given at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

The presentations apply to education in general and are not particularly focused on accounting and business education.

Workshop Title
Innovative Learning Programs for Accounting and Business: the Ivy League Goes Online, the Sloan Foundation Experiments in Asynchronous Learning, and Experiments in Self-Learning at Major Universities Using the BAM Pedagogy