Perhaps the most adventurous and highly funded project involving top universities, UNext.com, has eaten up in excess of $200 million with, so far, little or no prospect of return to its investors, which include the University of Chicago and Columbia University. Another Columbia-sponsored for-profit company, called Fathom.com, has recently changed its business strategy, reduced its workforce, lost at least one major partner, and suffered criticism from the Columbia faculty because of the losses it has sustained after an investment of more than $25 million.

More conservative university forays into online education also proliferated, with varying degrees of success. California's first venture into this arena was the California Virtual University (CVU), which was an electronic catalogue of technologically mediated courses offered by all accredited California institutions rather than a university per se. It drew close cooperation from its higher education participants, including UC, but it could not find adequate financial support in the private sector. It eventually was incorporated into the community colleges' California Virtual Campus (CVC), where it continues to serve as a resource for students.

The hype associated with online education in its early days teaches us some lessons, but it also creates some confusion as we formulate our policies and plans to go forward -- as we must. Despite unhappy experiences to date, no one seriously proposes that online education will go away or even that it will not continue to grow in popularity. Every major university, including ours, therefore will be forced to set policies, allocate resources (that is, spend money), establish infrastructures, and create plans to support online education.

This article discusses the issues and terminology associated with online education, describes the history of online education at UC, proposes some strategic approaches to online education that the University might adopt, and lists the elements crucial to the presentation of online education at levels of quality consistent with UC standards.

Online Education -- Who Needs It and What Is It?

University discussions and debates about online education frequently fall into one or more traps, based on a lack of understanding of the basic uses and capacities of online education. Often, the vocabulary used in such discussions is obscure or lacking in common definitions. I've outlined below what I think are the most important elements around which a common taxonomy that would greatly benefit the university community might be organized

The Convenience Market vs. the Traditional Market
For those of us in continuing education, the prospect of serving people "anyplace, anytime" presents exciting new vistas. We have always tried to reach our audiences at times and places convenient for them and consistent with their lifestyles. Evening and weekend courses, sometimes delivered at satellite centers or at the workplace, have been the normal form of delivery, sometimes supplemented or substituted by independent study courses (formerly correspondence instruction). We have also sometimes used teleconferencing or even television to deliver our programs.

Many of our students are "access challenged," not so much by educational background or financial need as by the exigencies of daily working adult lives. These people collectively form one of the two major markets for higher education in our country, which might be called the "convenience" segment. This group is very different from the more traditional higher education population, which wants and needs residential degree instruction. The traditional segment of the higher education market, which our university was founded to serve, honors and even exalts face-to-face instruction and the "nimbus" of educational experiences naturally associated with such a delivery mode, including interpersonal interactions between students and faculty members, interactions between students, and the folding in of education with the experience of campus life on a day-to-day basis. These factors are of much less importance to the convenience segment.

The first distinction to be made in any discussion of online education and its appropriate use in any university, therefore, is the distinction of audience - which market segment a particular online program is intended to serve. Often, those who object to online education serving the traditional audiences of the university have no objection whatsoever to its being used by an adult audience already possessed of the bachelor's degree.

Classroom Enhancement vs. Full Delivery
When we talk about online education, we also need to be aware that there is a continuum on which exist varying degrees of technology use, ranging from classroom enhancement to a hybrid course to full online delivery of a course. Today, virtually every UC campus has established a unit to help faculty members use Internet technology in their (face-to-face) classes. Faculty routinely incorporate into their courses email communications with students and faculty members, learning resources posted on the web, chat rooms, electronic white boards, self-grading quizzes, grade posting, and so on. I would consider these uses of technology to be "classroom enhancements."

Some instructors have gone beyond classroom enhancements, using online technology to change some fundamental aspects of their courses and sometimes reducing the number of classroom meetings in order to spend more time on online learning activities. The result is what is called a "hybrid" course. Hybrid courses are being tested in pockets across the UC system and are gaining in popularity.

At the opposite end of the continuum from classroom enhancements are full-delivery courses, given entirely online. Unlike classroom enhancements and hybrid courses, full-delivery courses require a markedly different method of operation in the entire range of educational services - marketing, program development and delivery, academic quality, student and instructor support, and student services. It is one thing to deliver an online course to a student in the dormitory across the street, who has access to a full range of university resources such as libraries and academic counseling, and another to send it to a student in Boise, Idaho, who will probably never come to campus.

Other Important Distinctions
Very few (if any) undergraduate courses at UC are taught completely online, whereas full-delivery courses are common in serving the convenience market segment (primarily by Extension programs). Even in this segment, however, some terms and delivery types can lead to confusion. For example, the distinction between the cohort and the independent study models of online instruction or distance education is often misunderstood. In the cohort model, a group of students start and finish a course at the same time, much as they would a classroom-based course. In the independent study model, on the other hand, a student can start a course at any time and proceed at his own pace through it

One underlying, often unexpressed concern of faculty members who are skeptical of online instruction is that it decreases the value of the instructor in the course, possibly even producing an "instructorless" course. A number of computer-based training (CBT) programs and courses on the market support this concern, and sometimes those opposed to online education equate online education with CBT. In fact, it is relatively well established that high-quality, university-level education requires faculty intervention in, and support of, student learning, and the quality of university-based online education therefore depends on a combination of good instructional design and effective instructors.

Faculty are also concerned with intellectual property, specifically the IP they create as a result of teaching a course, as well as how much time and energy they must spend on employing technology in a course. In this regard I like to think of there being two basic approaches to online education, the "walk-up" model and the "IP" (intellectual property) model.

The walk-up model is fairly familiar, since it constitutes the bulk of online education today. In this model, an instructor "walks up" to a preexisting delivery infrastructure such as Blackboard or Web CT or a campus version of this technology, is taught how to use the technology, and proceeds to teach the course, supplying her own materials, exercises, tests, and so on; in other words, supplying the full course design.

The IP model, on the other hand, begins with the development of intellectual property. It usually involves the work of an instructional design professional, a technologist, editors, artists, and so on, as well as a content expert (faculty member). The resulting piece of intellectual property can be transferred from one time period (term) to another or from one organization to another.

These two models are often confused, but their underlying financial structures are quite different. The walk-up model has greater flexibility, more reliance on the skill of instructors, and low up-front cost, but no transferability. The IP model, by contrast, has a high up-front cost and more standardization but also more transferability. It offers the possibility of generating licensing income and of entering a process of continuous improvement.

The differences between the walk-up and the IP models underscore the expectation that instructional design will be an increasingly important element in determining the quality of online instruction. Because instructional design comes at a cost, determining the level of such design is a crucial early strategic decision. Early notions that high-quality instructional design can be achieved only through very high investments (sometimes estimated at $1 million per course) have been dispelled, but even modest up-front costs ($30,000-$50,000 per course) can be enough to discourage university investment.

Past, Present, and Future Online Education at UC

Now that we've gotten some definitions out of the way, I'd like to take you through a timeline of online education at UC: where it's been, where it is now, and where it is headed.

The Beginning
Given the preceding discussion about the applicability of the online delivery mode to the convenience sector of the market and to continuing education, it is not surprising that the first large-scale efforts to utilize online learning occurred in Extension. The earliest such effort that I am aware of began in 1994 at Berkeley when the Sloan Foundation approached the University with an interest in gaining University involvement in the Sloan's Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) initiative. UC Berkeley Extension Online [ http://learn.berkeley.edu/ ], formerly the Department of Correspondence Study, eventually received more than $2.5 million from Sloan for the production and delivery of online courses.

One provision of the Sloan grant was that UC Berkeley Extension should utilize the services of a commercial delivery system. At that time, only one such system was truly viable. UC Berkeley Extension and the University therefore became the first -- and, for a very long time, the only -- university provider of education on AOL. UC Berkeley Extension has been delivering online courses since January 1996 and has produced more than 150 courses.

Berkeley's Academic Senate Committee on Courses of Instruction was (and is) responsible for the approval of most of UC Berkeley Extension's courses. That committee agreed that the courses it had already approved for distance education could be converted to the online format without further approval but that new courses developed for online delivery had to be approved separately and according to new specifications. The committee reviewed all aspects of online education over about two years and finally, on December 12, 1998, approved the first set of online courses.

Shortly after the Sloan program began at Berkeley, a privately funded for-profit company was formed to exploit the new technology in Southern California. This company, then called The Home Education Network (THEN), signed a contract with UCLA Extension to offer continuing education courses over the company's delivery infrastructure. Very quickly, it seemed, this partnership found itself serving many students online, combining the technology and expertise of THEN (later renamed OnlineLearning.net) and the educational programming skills and services of UCLA Extension.

These two groundbreaking efforts had some similarities and differences. In both cases, unlike the examples cited in the earlier discussion, very few University resources were placed at risk. The Sloan money came in the usual form of a foundation-funded project, and the UCLA/THEN agreement was structured in a way that caused most of the financial risk to be shouldered by the private company. The main difference was that the UC Berkeley Extension programs were based on the IP model, while the UCLA program was based on the walk-up model.

Most other UC Extensions now offer at least a few online courses each term, with a total number of courses reaching into the hundreds per term. It is estimated that over 10,000 students are served each year through online UC Extension courses. (You can search for all online courses offered through UC Extension programs by conducting an advanced search through the California Virtual Campus at ( http://www.cvc.edu/catalog/csearch_adv.asp ).

The Present
On May 24, 2001, the UC Irvine Division of the Academic Senate unanimously approved UC's first online degree program, the Masters of Advanced Studies in Criminology, Law, and Society. This approval followed more than two years of effort by the UCI Department of Criminology, Law, and Society (CLS) to create and then propose and defend the degree. In April 2002 this program received its full approval from the University. In January 2003, it will join the other degree offerings of the CLS department: an undergraduate major, and a Ph.D. degree.

The CLS department conducted research that indicated a clear demand for a master's degree among professionals in the criminal justice and related service agencies in the state. The research also indicated that the audience for this degree was composed largely of busy, working professionals who were unable to put their careers on hold while they obtained an advanced degree. The audience qualified for admission to the degree program (undergraduate GPA's of 3.0 or higher with qualifying GRE scores) was geographically dispersed, so the online, distance delivery mode appeared to be the only viable option for reaching it.

Everyone concerned with this degree, including the faculty members involved in developing and delivering the program, considers it a test case or experiment for the University. Considerable and continual evaluation is therefore planned for the program's early stages.

Throughout the UC system, individual instructors, departments, and campuses are experimenting with varying degrees of online education. For example, with a grant from the Mellon Foundation, UC Davis is conducting a multi-year project to implement and evaluate the use of information technology in large undergraduate courses [ http://CloudyBay.ucdavis.edu/Mellon/index.html ]. The campus's Mediaworks unit has helped several campus departments put high-demand general education courses online, mostly in a "hybrid" fashion. Students in certain Anthropology, Viticulture, Statistics, and Asian Art History classes can choose between taking these courses either via computer or within a classroom setting. At UCLA, the School of Nursing is offering an online Master degree program in Nursing Administration [ http://nursing.uclaonline.org/ ], and faculty across the system are experimenting with innovative uses of technology in their courses.

The Future
It is clear now that online education is not going to alter the basic mission or delivery methods of the University of California. We will continue to be primarily a residential degree-granting institution, serving the youth of California as they come to our campuses in increasing numbers over the next ten years. We will also maintain and increase our residential graduate degree programs, which are the primary source of our reputation as a research university.

However, these programs will benefit from the expanded use of classroom enhancements involving new technologies. Our campuses will be devoting more and more resources to the support of Internet-based instruction for our traditional students, as both a strategy and a necessary undertaking. Our students and faculty will demand these services and expenditures, and we will lose ground to other universities if we don't keep up on this dimension of online education.

There will also be some clear strategic reasons for our University to maintain and build the capacity to engage in the "full delivery" mode of online education for both new and traditional audiences. In this domain we will have to remain alert and careful, always tying our efforts to clear objectives and goals and always proceeding in a way that does not harm our traditions. Online and distance education are sure to be important to meeting the needs of any audience that is "time- and place-challenged" in its quest for access to higher education.

Strategies: The Whys of Online Education

The following examples of possible strategic reasons for our University to offer "full-delivery" online education support current and continuing University efforts to develop the capacity to deliver such education, even in advance of actual need. More and more opportunities are bound to crop up as the quality of online education improves and the demand for it increases. However, the reputation of online education is still quite fragile, so we must make sure that we have good "whys" before we enter into online projects. This means choosing projects in which there is a good fit between audience, subject matter, and delivery system. Choosing wisely will add to the stock of supporting evidence for the delivery method, whereas choosing poorly could seriously damage the progress we have made so far.

Undergraduate Instruction
While the general consensus is that UC should offer undergraduate degrees that are primarily earned in classrooms, there are several reasons to provide some online instruction to traditional undergraduates, particularly given the "Tidal Wave II" phenomenon. One logical place for such instruction is Summer Session. The ability to provide online courses to undergraduates during the summer, so that they can enjoy their normal summer activities of work and recreation while making progress toward their degrees, might achieve several strategic objectives: increasing Summer Session enrollments, lessening time to degree, reducing the problem of impacted classes, and, in some cases, reducing the pressures on physical facilities.

Another area that might benefit from online instruction is small, specialized classes. In some fields, such as the less commonly taught languages, there is an interest in classes for which too few students exist on one or more campuses to make the classes viable. It may make sense to bring these far-flung students together by means of an online course.

Yet another strategic use of online education might be for remedial or skill-focused courses, which are not normally considered part of the undergraduate curriculum but can be important for students' success. Remedial courses might include writing and mathematics courses; skill-focused courses might include courses teaching software packages (computer-aided design, statistics, word processing, spreadsheet, database), or interpersonal skills (negotiating, dealing with difficult people, team building). Compliance-based courses, such as courses in laboratory safety, regulations governing the use of human and animal subjects in experiments, and handling of biological materials might also fit into this category.

An underlying philosophical reason for all these efforts, and an argument against the rigid defenders of tradition who would deny undergraduates the right to take any of their official UC program online, is the notion that we have an obligation to teach students how to learn. Since we expect that a significant number of our students will have to continue to learn after they leave us and that more and more of the learning available to them will be online, it is logical that students should have at least the chance to experience online learning before graduation. Several universities, such as Chapman University in California, are even requiring that students take at least one class online.

Graduate Education
Many of the possible applications of online education to undergraduate education also apply to graduate education. In addition, as in the cases of the Criminology, Law & Society degree at UCI and the Master of Nursing Administration at UCLA, there exist some compelling strategic reasons to offer at least some graduate degrees online. This is particularly true in professional fields, in which residential university experiences usually play a relatively small part in the formation of the field's culture. Indeed, in some disciplines and for some departments, there may be no alternative to online education because of the nature of the audience (or market) for the degree.

Continuing Education
University and Cooperative Extension programs throughout the University are very busy discovering strategic reasons to utilize online education. The range of these efforts is too wide to discuss here, but virtually every discipline and every profession is being served. Continuing online education is important for a wide range of other University activities as well. Throughout the country, for instance, university alumni associations are using online continuing education programs as member benefits and as ways to maintain relations with alumni members. University hospitals and medical schools are using online continuing education programs for patient education and physician Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs. In fact, any university unit that serves non-matriculated students in the convenience market segment has a use for online education. University employee training and education is another logical use of online continuing education.

Practical Elements: The Hows of Online Education

Of course, merely choosing the right online projects is not enough to assure continued progress. Once chosen, such projects must be executed well and with quality. The "hows" of online education therefore are just as important as the "whys."

Because so many universities have experimented with online education, the elements necessary for successful implementation of a full-delivery online program are now fairly clear. These elements, which include course development, technical infrastructure, student support, marketing, and evaluation, are judged according to standards set by a number of organizations, including the regional accrediting bodies, such as the Western Association of Schools & Colleges (WASC). Here is a list, with brief explanations, of the elements needed for the delivery of high-quality online education.

1. Course and curriculum development , including the application of professional instructional design, project management, standardized workflow processes, and learning object storage and retrieval.

2. Technical delivery infrastructure , including the hardware, telecommunications, and specialized software needed to serve students and instructors; sometimes called a course management system (CMS), such as Blackboard or WebCT.

3. Student support specific to the online course, including technical and academic services and counseling.

4. Instructor support and supervision , again including technical support and training in effective pedagogical practices associated with online education.

5. Academic quality assurance , including monitoring, compliance with standards, and the continuous adoption of best practices.

6. Faculty role definition , including definitions of workload, intellectual property rights, productivity measures, academic support, and standards of conduct.

7. Marketing , particularly for programs requiring the recruitment of geographically dispersed students and dependent for financial success on the number of enrollments.

8. Research and evaluation to support a continuous improvement process and to assure the stakeholders that the effort is effective and worthwhile.

9. Administration and management , including planning and the management of contractual and legal elements, financial and accounting aspects, projects, politics, and the many partners and relationships that are inevitably involved.

Of course, a few illustrations of strategic "whys" and a simple list of the "hows" of quality online education cannot provide much help as UC embarks on online education ventures. UC has a number of good existing programs to learn from, however, and other universities also have successful online offerings. The risk we face is that, in a decentralized system where autonomy is honored among campuses and among colleges, schools, and departments within campuses; where resources are always tight; and where experience with online education is relatively limited, we may experience some very visible failures that will set us back. Careful oversight and some degree of coordination and control are essential now, to keep us out of trouble.

So far, our conservatism in entering online education, and, frankly, the absence of any clear reason to get into online education, have helped us avoid some of the mistakes made by our peer institutions. However, as we become more involved in online education, pushed by forces both inside and outside the institution, these institutional characteristics will not remain sufficient to protect us. The administration and faculty of UC need to inform themselves about online education and establish processes that will lead us in the right direction.

There are clear signs that this leadership is beginning to exert itself. I look forward to observing and being part of this exciting development in higher education and UC's response to it.