As technology leads the way in providing quality-based education, regardless of distance, it also has fostered a whole new delivery system for the global problem of bullying. Today, bullying is identified in more places than just the playground. Bullies are now identified everywhere, from the classroom to the workplace, and a growing number of bullies are taking their act online.

Cyber bullying is a flourishing practice for frustrated individuals who have feelings of inadequacy. The anonymity of the Internet allows them to freely engage in their bullying behaviors, especially during chat sessions, on bulletin boards, and in discussion threads. Though the information on such bullying is still limited, the fact remains that more and more people are becoming the victims of online bullying.

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Imagine studying for your master’s degree-in bed. Imagine never having to drive on icy roads to get to your college or university classes-in -40 temperatures. Imagine deciding when YOU want to work on your assignments. Imagine never again having to look for a parking space on campus. Yes, distance education clearly has its advantages.

Distance education is here to stay. Colleges, universities, and businesses that recognize and accept the benefits of distance education are utilizing it to increase their enrollment, enhance employees’ knowledge and productivity, and expand their global influence. They are fast becoming the 21st-century leaders in the development of courses and technology that make distance education the phenomenon that it is and will continue to be.

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The following article has been taken from the Web site “Title III: Teaching With Technology” (http://dl.lscc.cc.fl.us/facultytraining/index.htm). Although the guidelines focus on the Title III requirements of ADA, they are beneficial to anyone developing and teaching an online course. Readers should also sure to check out some of the very informative links on this Web site.

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This month’s feature on LH’s partnership with the NFB to promote online teacher training may lead one to wonder what blind children encounter in their schooling. Barbara Cheadle has written an article detailing exactly that subject for the NFB’s online journal. In “A Typical School Day in the Life of a Blind Fourth Grader,” Cheadle shadows 13-year-old Rachel Becker, a bright and active student with a visual impairment. Rachel attends an ordinary, public elementary school in Maryland. The article illustrates how Rachel’s normal day can be just as ordinary as that of her classmates yet holding its own unique challenges and obstacles at the same time. To experience a day at school with no vision, click here to read Cheadle’s article: (http://www.nfb.org/fr/fr11/fr03fa.htm).

As a graduate student in England, Dr. Michael Lissack found himself at a loss for efficient and beneficial research capabilities. He got through the experience and emerged with a degree to his name, but he did not forget the lesson he learned the hard way: Students absolutely require a capable method of research.

In the late 1990s, Lissack acted upon his thoughts and founded a research engine that employed “seek-find technology” to return the best in results. He dubbed it Learner’s Library (www.learnerslibrary.com). Learner’s Library was not simply another keyword search site, however. Lissack’s creation stands out for its ability to search for and find concepts, not merely specific words.

Lissack asked Dr. Morris Shepard, former CEO of the custom publishing firm Book Tech, to guide Learner’s Library into the lives of students and educators. Originally, Learner’s Library was marketed toward individuals. Dr. Shepard soon learned that the most efficient and cost-effective use of the online tool was as a component of an educational institution’s library research system. Although some librarians at first viewed Learner’s Library with a wary eye, they soon learned of its merits for students and for themselves: It relieves pressure and workloads with its quick and accurate guidance.

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After more than 30 years of witnessing bullying in schools from the viewpoint of a teacher and a parent, Dr. Allan L. Beane decided to use his difficult experiences for the education of others. In 1999, he penned The Bully Free Classroom and has since created numerous tools, from posters to online courses, for preventing and coping with bullying. All Bully Free products, plus gratis tips, are available at www.bullyfree.com.

As stated on its Web site, bullyfree.com’s mission is “to promote a sense of belonging and acceptance of all individuals and to promote the Golden Rule through quality materials, workshops, presentations, and Web courses.” In that spirit of inclusion, bullyfree.com offers support to people on every side of the delicate problem of bullying: teachers, parents, communities, schools, victims, and even bullies themselves. As Dr. Beane wrote, “Bullies need help as much as victims.”

Currently Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Mid-Continent College, Dr. Beane has served as a classroom teacher of speech and debate, special education, and higher education; a consultant; a director of a school safety center; and an ordained minister. He is a nationally recognized expert, speaker, and author on bullying, having written more than 30 articles, 2 book chapters, and a book. Fox News has called upon Dr. Beane as a guest expert on bullying, and his testimony has played a role in related criminal cases.

Given this extensive background in guiding and comforting those influenced by bullying, it is no wonder that Dr. Beane is an active and much sought after speaker for such venues as conferences, schools, and organizations. Various speeches and presentations made by Dr. Beane are outlined on www.bullyfree.com.

The Bully Free Classroom won Learning Magazine’s 2001 Teacher’s Choice Award. It has currently sold in excess of 66,000 copies, and it is read in educational institutions and school systems nationwide.

Online courses have become an important addition to the Bully Free arsenal. Through a partnership with The Learning House, Inc. (www.learninghouse.com), Dr. Beane has assembled two distance learning opportunities: “Behavior Management Strategies for School Bus Drivers” and “Bully Prevention for School Personnel.” The courses serve individuals who interact with children daily at school and seek to educate them in the most effective and sensitive means of creating a Bully Free environment.

According to statistics from www.bullyfree.com, bullying in schools creates abundant, deleterious effects ranging from causing low self-esteem and eating disorders to being a common theme in school shootings. Workplace bullying, often an overlooked issue, produces high rates of sick leave, dismissals, early retirements, and stress-related illnesses in adults.

Research has been conducted to measure the effectiveness of Dr. Beane’s Bully Free methods. It returned results showing decreases in aggressive occurrences, numbers of bullied students, and feelings that bullies exist in schools; increases in school attendance, students feeling safe reporting bullying, and improved academic performance.

www.bullyfree.com serves as a tool for any individual or institution interested in preventing bullying or learning more about Dr. Beane’s expertise and personal experience with the consequences of bullying. The site easily guides visitors to Dr. Beane’s biography, free tips for children and adults alike, information on bullying research, and Bully Free products.

Strategies for implementing distance learning coursework have evolved and expanded with the growth and maturation of the World Wide Web. The requirements, advantages, and disadvantages of the most common strategies are compared and contrasted. Initially limited to individual efforts, software development has eased the burden of individual faculty and has opened up strategies for greater participation. Institutions attempting large-scale implementations however may find infrastructure requirements overwhelming. An emerging large-scale strategy involves an institutional partnership with a for-profit Application Service Provider (ASP). The ASP specializes in total systems solutions for developing and delivering Web-based distance learning programs. Recent experiences at California State University, Fullerton with an ASP are discussed.

Introduction

The United States Distance Learning Association’s Website currently defines distance learning as, “the acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and instruction” (2000). While not new, the growth of distance learning offerings has grown significantly over the past five years. Lewis et. al. (1997) in a National Center of Education Statistics [NCES] report, stated that an estimated 25,730 distance education courses were offered by higher education institutions in academic year 1994-95. The primary delivery modes were two-way interactive video and one way pre-recorded video. Lewis et. al. (1999), using the latest NCES survey revealed that by academic year 1997- 98 this number jumped to 54,470. As an indication of the rapid change in delivery modes, term “internet-based technologies” was absent from the 1997 NCES survey and prominent in the 1999 NCES survey. The 1999 survey revealed that asynchronous and synchronous computer based instruction were primary modes of instruction for some courses at 58 and 19 percent of institutions respectively. A major finding of the 1998-99 information technology survey of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges [NASULGC] (1999) was that two-thirds of NASULGC institutions reported collaborating with business/industry, government/communities, other higher education institutions, or other organizations on a “virtual university” or an IT-supported distance-learning project.

The rapid expansion of distance learning has placed pressure on faculty to deliver effective courses, although the efficacy of distance learning has not been proven conclusively. For instance, THE INSTITUTE for Higher Education Policy (1999) reports that there is a relative paucity of true, original research dedicated to explaining or predicting phenomena related to distance learning. In addition, they report that the overall quality of the original research is questionable and thereby renders many of the findings inconclusive. Faculty are still expected to jump on the distance learning bandwagon. A National Education Association [NEA] (2000) poll of more than 400 distance learning instructors indicated that more than half of distance learning faculty spend more hours on their distance learning course than traditional classes. In spite of this, 84% do not get a corresponding reduction in workload, and 63% are compensated for their distance learning course as if it were part of their normal course load. Berg (2000) supports this observation by concluding that there is a tendency towards treating distance learning courses as regular load for faculty and in not including a royalty structure in these agreements.

The need for faculty buy in to distance learning is crucial. The NEA poll (2000) found that three-quarters of the respondents hold positive feelings about distance learning, compared to only 14% who hold negative feelings. Still, it is necessary to assist the faculty in course development and delivery. The Campus Computing Project (1999) survey concluded that assisting faculty efforts “to integrate technology into instruction” remains the single most important information technology (IT) challenge confronting American colleges and universities over the next two to three years. This need is supported by “how-to” guides such as Boettcher & Conrad’s (1999) Faculty guide for moving teaching and learning to the web and Yoakam, Franklin, & Warren’s (1999) Distance learning: A guide to system planning and implementation. Boettcher & Conrad provide faculty and administrators with a set of practical guidelines for implementing Web-based learning in postsecondary institutions. Yoakam et. al. present a comprehensive look at three critical components of a distance learning system: technology systems, instructional systems, and management systems.

A key observation regarding these guides is the increased importance of institutional commitment. The financial investment in Information Technology, according to the NASULGC (1999), currently equals about 5% of a member university’s operating budget (with a maximum of about 11%). Distance learning has evolved beyond simple delivery systems and into the business mainstream. Hanna (1998) identifies and classifies new organizational models that have emerged in the era of digital competition. These involve traditional universities, extended traditional universities and distance education/technology-based universities. Of particular interest is the emergence of university/industry strategic alliances. Syllabus Magazine (2000) in their Buyer’s guide list 13 Online Course Delivery and Development Tools that offer enterprise, or near enterprise solutions. Also listed are six Web Development Tools to assist in the creation of interactive Web sites.

These major implementation tools are only a few years old. They coincide with the growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web. This paper looks at how the web-based strategies for distance education have evolved from pioneering efforts less than ten years ago to the current direction of large-scale implementations involving university/industry alliances. Insights are provided by examining the experiences at California State University, Fullerton. These observations are likely indicative of trend and direction of web-based distance learning.

Multiple strategies exist for implementing distance learning coursework. Factors impacting these strategies include course development, course delivery, computer network connectivity, and the degree and quality of student and instructor support. Course delivery includes issues of remote student interaction with faculty via video, audio, computer, etc. Network connectivity deals with network configurations, transmission speeds, and other technical details. In this context support is related to both time concerns (e.g. is there someone there who can help me?) and technical issues (e.g. why can’t I log in?). Table 1 classifies the “Level” of effort invested in implementing a distance learning course. Each Level requires the involvement of different Participant resources; each would employ different course development Processes; and each requires different degrees of technical infrastructure and support (Connectivity and Student Support). Qualitative terms of Low, Medium, and High are used for each of these factors to provide a point of reference for total labor hours invested, level of technical complexity and organizational commitment.

The Ad Hoc Development process typically entails the use of basic tools such as HTML editors (hyper-text markup language for web pages), or more advanced software packages such as FrontPage, a Microsoft Web site creation and management tool. These tools became available when the Internet went graphical with the advent of browser technology circa 1995. Web page construction software has continued to improve in capabilities and user friendliness; archaic commands and editing are no longer needed. The category, Purchase/license/utilize course development systems includes the use of Web-based learning tools such as WebCT (http://www.Webct.com/) or Blackboard (http://www.blackboard.com/ ). These systems, developed around 1997 by faculty at the University of British Columbia and Cornell University respectively, enable non-technical instructors to produce online courses without much concern for the technical underpinnings of the systems. As well, they provide a self-contained and well-defined Web-based learning environment that developers using Ad Hoc processes would otherwise have to invent themselves. Both these tools were available to develop and deliver Web-based distance learning courses long before for-profit companies adopted them for distribution to a much broader higher education marketplace. In Fall 2000 Blackboard released an enterprise edition that serves as an Application Service Provider (ASP).

The Complete Out source Development/ASP process evolves when institutions partner with for-profit companies (ASPs) for assistance in identifying the market, training theirinstructors, developing their courses, hosting their programs, evaluating their progress, and reporting on the status of the systems. An example of such a vendor is The Learning House, Inc. . (http://www.learnignhouse.com). These companies are only a few years old (circa 1998), and fulfill an important and growing segment of the distance learning market.

The simplest level of Connectivity has an instructor using his or her own desktop PC as a server. Bulletin boards and e-mail capability have existed on mainframes for decades. Using a PC as a server requires some degree of digital communication capability. Limited capabilities were available in the mid-1980s. The simplest level of Student Support results when an instructor is involved in all aspects of communication with students by being available at designated times for interactions, and perhaps communicating via email. “Network” connectivity might involve a school server maintained by instructional staff during normal business hours. Wide spread use local area networks emerged in the late 1980s. Student Support would be available during business hours (typically 9 AM to 5 PM). The most sophisticated Connectivity involves a complete Web-hosted service that is maintained and administered on an around-the-clock basis by either an institution or an ASP vendor. Student Support would then be available for 24 hours/day, and seven days/week (24/7). Mainframe support has historically been 24/7 whereas 24/7 on-line Internet support is relatively recent.

Selecting one level of effort option from each factor may identify basic implementation strategies. Of course, not every combination results in a feasible strategy. One infeasible option would be an Individual Instructor using Ad Hoc Development with a network providing 24/7 support. Another infeasible option would be full institutional participation using a personal computer as a server. Some of the factors fit together naturally. For example, full Web hosting would normally be accompanied by 24/7 support; using a PC as a server would normally have limited support. By excluding the unnatural combinations Table 2 provides five feasible implementation strategies.