Learning from the Past

plead with their faculty to institute new distance education programs every academic year. Faculty are bombarded with prophecies about the glorious future confronting distance education programs. New bureaucracies have sprung up of computer technicians offering to assist in preparing these programs. If distance education has such a promising future, why the faculty hesitation? One explanation could be that faculty are uncomfortable with the new technology required to implement a distance education course. But with the plethora of IS personnel poised and ready to assist, this doesn’t seem likely. Another answer might be that faculty believe they aren’t adequately compensated for the developmental time necessary to produce these courses. However, even in universities where the compensation offered is equal to that offered for the development of traditional courses, few faculty seem eager to participate. We believe that the real reason for the failure of faculty to embrace distance education is their suspicion that it will follow the same path as did correspondence education in the 20th century. If this happens, distance education will experience the same negative outcome and fail to achieve all that it promises. Recall that early in the 20th century correspondence study programs also promised an anywhere, any time educational experience. The first response in the educational marketplace was exceedingly positive. The enthusiasm for correspondence education soon waned, however, as people came to perceive its programs as second rate. It’s important to understand why this view came to dominate the academic perception of correspondence education. Otherwise, the same perception of poor quality may come to hamper distance education, despite the educational marketplace’s initially positive response. Any decline in respect will arise from the failure of course developers Distance education can succeed by not repeating the mistakes of correspondence education