Come Home To College

Peter J. Dirr

ABSTRACT: Because of new applications of telecommunications, especially television, adults today have increasing flexibility in taking advantage of college courses in the privacy and convenience of their homes. The quality of courses has improved greatly in the last few years, and they are available in a variety of subject areas. Today's television courses are carefully designed and produced by teams of leading scholars and producers. Most of the country's public televison stations broadcast one or more television courses, each semester. In addition, many are broadcast on local cable chan- nels. Most of the students for television courses are older than traditional college students, female and employed. They view the television courses at home. In the future, the personal computer can be expected to add new dimensions and flexibility to home- based college education.

An ad in the August 1984 Education Supplement of The New York Times issues the invitation to "Come Home To College." The ad an- nounces the first season of The Annenberg/CPB Project courses --resources designed to extend educational opportunities to those unable to attend college in traditional ways.

The Annenberg/CPB Project was created in 1981 to support projects that use telecommunications technologies to enhance the quality and availability of higher education. With funds of $150 million from The Annenberg School of Communications over 15 years, the Project is ad- ministered by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Annenberg/CPB Project has joined a growing number of higher educational services and resources available to adults today. These services share one common goal--to use telecommunications technologies to extend higher education courses to adult learners in more attractive and convenient formats, often in the comfort and con- venience of their homes. Most of these services currently use broad- cast or cable television and/or video cassettes to deliver the courses. A few use the telephone, radio and/or audio cassettes. In the future, several can be expected to use computers as well.

Besides The Annenberg/CPB Project, major providers of college level courses through telecommunications include: the PBS Adult Learning Service, the International University Consortium, and The Learning Channel. Although each of these services functions on a nationwide basis, each works closely with local colleges to design the courses. And it is the local colleges that provide student support ser- vices and determine and award credit for the courses.

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In addition to the nationwide efforts, several colleges produce their own courses and offer them locally and to other colleges. Coastline Community College in Orange County, California; Miami-Dade Com- munity College; Dallas County Community College; Maricopa County Community College, and the Chicago City College are noteworthy examples.

What Courses Are Available?

The courses that are available vary from term to term and from area to area. The Telecourse Inventory, published by the Center for Learning and Telecommunications of the American Association for Higher Education in 1984, lists 139 high quality video and audio cour- ses that are available nationally.

Another inventory published at about the same time by the Western Interstate Consortium for Higher Education listed more than 1,000 television courses or course modules that were available for use by colleges and universities.

Beyond being generally available, and to be useful to adult learners, the courses have to be delivered in a usable way, usually by broadcast, over cable, or by cassette. Many of those courses are delivered by satellite by PBS' Adult Learning Service to public television stations throughout the country each term. Each local station decides whether to broadcast the courses. Typically, anywhere from 30 percent to 95 percent of the stations decide to broadcast the college courses distributed by the Adult Learning Service.

Using the Fall 1984 term as an example, and focusing on only three major sources of television courses, learners throughout the United States had easy access to courses in political science, psychology, English composition, literature, business, computer literacy, earth science, biology, humanities, and futures studies. Throughout the United States, hundreds of colleges and universities provided student support services and credits for these courses. The exact number of colleges is not known at the time this article is being written but it is known that in 1979 seven hundred fifty of the country's three thousand colleges and universities offered courses over television and enrolled one-half million students in those courses. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Center for Education Statistics expect to have updated numbers by the end of 1985.

A sampling of those courses shows the rich diversity of educational opportunities available to adults in theconvenience of their homes.

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Congress: We The People is a 13-unit political science course that provides the learner with an inside view of the United States Congress and its complex range of individuals, organizations, and processes. Moderated by noted journalist Edwin Newman, and featuring congressional scholar Norman Ornstein as commentator, this television course provides gripping viewing and a sound un- derstanding of how Congress works. Case studies and examples of Congress in action include: Congressional elections, committee leader- ship, lobbying, constituent relations, lawmaking, budgeting, ethics, and congressional relations with other branches of the government. The television programs in this course from The Annenberg/CPB Project are accompanied by a student study guide and are keyed to three of the leading textbooks on Congress.

The Write Course: An Introduction To College Composition, another course from The Annenberg/CPB Project, presents real-life dramatizations of the writing process at work as a technique to im- prove writing skills. Students learn by example that writing is recur- sive rather than a neat progression of stages. The 15-week course features such leading experts and famous writers as Irving Wallace, Irving Stone, and Larry Gelbart. The course covers basic skills for academic and business writing, including: shaping a thesis, prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, planning a composition and composing effective sentences, paragraphs and essays. A new text- book written for the course is published by Holt, Rinehart and Win- ston.

One of the most spectacular and challenging television series to hit the airwaves in recent years, The Brai~ is also a television course. Leading scientists throughout the world are shown studying the mysteries of the brain. The eight television programs are woven into a 10-lesson course that examines issues such as the mysteries of con- sciousness, vision and movement, pain and anxiety, memory, thought and language, and schizophrenia. A major new textbook and a student study guide written to accompany the television series are published by W. H. Freeman and Company.

The Age of Enlightenment, a nine-credit course adapted by the In- ternational University Consortium from a course originally produced by the British Open University, explores the culture of the "Age of Reason" at its height through the close study of a number of major texts from the time and certain leading figures from the period. The eight television programs provide pacing and motivation for the six- teen instructional units (one television program every other week). Required "readings" include the student study guide, an anthology of

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18th century texts, two textbooks, and a recording of Marriage of Figaro.

Also from the International University Consortium was Times Har- vest: Exploring The Future, an upper-level course examining the major issues and philosophies of futures studies along with the methodologies and techniques used in futures research. The course helped students analyze systematically the effects of social and technological change from a global, national, local, and personal per- spective. Besides the student study guide, the eight television programs are accompanied by seven required texts.

Heritage: Civilization And The Jews, distributed by PBS' Adult Learning Service, is an introductory survey of Jewish history, thought and culture against the backdrop of the civilizations in which Jews have lived. Abba Eban, scholar, writer, and former Israeli Am- bassador to the United Nations and to the United States, is on-screen host, commentator and chief consultant for the nine-program television series. A student study guide, a book of readings and a tradebook by Mr. Eban complement the series and provide the basis ~ for the course.

The Business of Management is a 13-week course produced by the Southern California Consortium for Community College Television and distributed by PBS' Adult Learning Service. The course is designed for men and women who are managerial candidates and provides a valuable introduction to the concepts of management and business. It helps the learner develop essential skills in planning and organizing, staffing and directing, controlling, decision making, motivating, communicating and applying managerial skills to business and other types of organizations.

Focus On Society, is an introductory sociology course that, in teaching the principles of sociology, helps the learner understand the pervasive changes that characterize our society. Interviews with renowned social scientists and close examination of portions of our society experiencing change provide the basis for the course. The student study guide ties the television programs to a leading sociology textbook.

What Are The Courses Like?

A common goal shared by those producing courses for television, radio and computer distribution is to combine the highest academic scholarship with the best possible production techniques to create

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courses that will motivate the learner, pace the learning, and be solid academic experiences. In all respects, the courses are designed to be as rigorous as or more rigorous than comparable on-campus courses. In many instances the courses provide learning opportunities that are not available on many college campuses.

Most courses are created by production teams that consist of sub- ject mat ter experts, instructional design experts, production per- sonnel, and research and evaluation personnel. In most cases, an academic advisory committee of renowned scholars in the discipline oversees and periodically reviews the work of the course production team. They create a course structure that will stand up to close scrutiny by the academic community.

The course structure usually includes one or two lessons for each week of a term. Each lesson will consist of the television or radio or computer component and textbook readings. The s tudent is lead through the lesson by a " s tudy guide" that provides an outline of the important points of the lesson, provides self-examination questions, and refers the learner to additional resources on the topic(s). In this respect, the courses are not much different from traditional college courses except that the television or radio or computer component replaces the classroom lecture.

A local college deciding to offer one of these courses might com- plement the predeveloped components with regular contact with a faculty member either through in-person seminars or telephone con- ferences, proctored examinations, and an academic counseling service for s tudents to make sure they are taking courses that are appropriate to a degree program if they expect eventually to receive a degree. The local college also assesses the student performance and decides what credit to award.

Who Are The Students?

A systematic nationwide s tudy of the s tudents enrolled in television courses has never been conducted. Several of the producers of television courses have conducted small studies of the students who enroll locally, especially during field tes t semesters. Consequently, the information about s tudents was scant and course-specific until 1984 when a s tudy was conducted of 8,000 students enrolled in 50 television courses at 43 colleges and universities across the country. The study, funded by The Annenberg/CPB Project, was conducted by Ron Brey under the auspices of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges. The major findings of the s tudy were:

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�9 Over two-thirds of the students were female. �9 Only 23 percent of the students were the traditional college age,

18 to 22 year olds. The rest were older, especially in the 23 to 39 year old categories. The proportion of women increased with age.

~ About 80 percent were employed either part-time or full-time. �9 About 20 percent were enrolled only in the television course and

were new students drawn to the college by the television course. For 15 percent, it had been six years or more since they had any formal education.

�9 Apparently, 80 percent were using the television course to ac- celerate their college education; 40 percent were enrolled in ten or more credit hours including the television course.

�9 For ty percent reportedly enrolled in the television course because an on-campus section of the course would conflict with their work schedules.

�9 This was the first television course for almost two-thirds of the group.

�9 Eight out of every ten students intended to view the television programs at home. This was especially true for students who were older, female, married and not concurrently enrolled in on-campus courses.

~ The semester course schedule was the most effective way to promote the course and to at t ract students to it. This was especially true for on-campus students. Newspaper ads and ar- ticles and recommendations from friends were also effective means for at t ract ing off-campus students.

The overall picture provided by the s tudy is that television courses provide a valuable and needed resource to learners. They help on- campus students complete their degrees by providing them an op- portuni ty to take courses that would not otherwise be available to them and to accelerate the time it takes to complete a degree. Television courses also help students for whom campus-based in- struction is not convenient by extending educational opportunities to them at convenient times and places.

What Does The Future Hold?

No one can predict the future directions which telecommunications or higher education might take. However, certain trends appear to have taken root.

Television courses have become a fact of life for one-fourth or more

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of all colleges and universities in this country. In the past five years, both the academic and production quality of those courses have in- creased significantly. Today's television courses combine both good television viewing and the best scholarship available in the country. It would seem that this type of instruction will continue for the im- mediate future.

One of the limitations of television courses is that they do not enable students to interact with the faculty member, other students or the materials (e.g., as in the case of computer-based instruction}. This has sometimes been referred to as the "loneliness of the long-distance learner." Exploratory efforts are just now beginning to overcome this limitation through related computer exercises or electronic mail com- ponents for the television courses.

It has not been possible, at this point, to write much about com- puter-based courses for the distant learner. The fact is that most in- dividuals lack computers in the home that would have sufficient capacity to sustain college-level course materials. Consequently, while computer-based course materials have been used on college campuses for years, they have, for the most part, been restricted to campus use.

This can be expected to change dramatically over the next five years. The capacity of personal computers is increasing exponentially and their cost is decreasing annually. The use of personal computers in the home is expected to grow from about 5 percent in 1984 to over 30 percent by 1990. This should create a sizeable market that is attractive to course developers. When this stage is reached, courses can be ex- pected to be more interactive and provide personalized instruction, tailored to the capabilities and interests of the learner.

This has not been a comprehensive study of telecommunications in higher education nor a complete inventory of learning opportunities available to the learner in the home. It is intended to suggest that throughout the country, hundreds of colleges and universities are ap- plying the power of telecommunications to higher education. In many cases, the result is that educational opportunities, once limited to college campuses, are now becoming abundant to learners in their homes.