Distance Education in Geographic Information Science: Symposium and an Informal Survey

The US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2002) defines distance education as “education or training courses delivered to remote (off-campus) location(s) via audio, video (live or prerecorded), or computer technologies, including both synchronous and asynchronous instruction” (NCES, 2000, p. 2). This definition excludes correspondence courses, by which colleges, universities and commercial enterprises have delivered educational opportunities via postal services to distant learners in many parts of the world for a century or more. While such a definition may seem too exclusive, it does highlight the technological innovations that, combined with unprecedented economic challenges faced by higher education institutions, have led to rapid growth in distance education over the past decade. Educators are not of one mind about distance education, of course. Some celebrate the potential to expand access to higher education to lifelong learners not well served by traditional place-bound courses (e.g. Kellogg Commission, 1999). Others foresee revolutionary impact not only in expanding access to higher education but also in reforming it, by leveraging computers and networks potentially to create a new, more active more student-centered pedagogy (e.g. Benyon et al., 1997; Browning & Williams, 1997). Still others view distance education as evidence of a regressive trend toward the automation of higher education and the commercialization of the academy (e.g. Gober, 1998; Noble, 1998). While a recent study has found that equivalent learning activities can be equally effective for both online and face-to-face courses (Neuhauser, 2002),