Planning and Managing the Development of Courses for Distance Delivery: Results From a Qualitative Study

Converting traditional face-to-face course offerings into distance delivery formats is one of the greatest challenges facing administrators and faculty in higher education today. In addressing this challenge, it is evident that there are two primary approaches to managing distance course development. Some faculties opt to develop and deliver courses on their own (Reinert & Fryback, 1997), whereas others work in close collaboration with selected university or college departments to implement this conversion process. The experience of the authors is the latter, that is development and delivery of courses for distance education has occurred in collaboration with other disciplines in the university. This article will examine the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff from supporting university departments as they struggled with the issues inherent in interdisciplinary course development.