I suspect similarly elaborate and ultimately futile, even destructive, charades are being enacted currently at countless colleges and universities. Others are being planned. It isn't for lack of how-to information. Reliable, scholarly advice about how to set up successful online programs is easy to find. Numerous hardcopy and electronic journals include or specialize in distance learning topics and a substantial proportion of the online information explosion seems to consist of reports of research findings, case studies and scholarly summaries of distance teaching-learning experience.
Institutional systems have to change to offer computer-mediated programs.
The use of the technology itself is anxiety-provoking for many of our colleagues. Further, people have established bases of personal power within the traditional structure and are loath to risk loss of status in the new one. Homogenous groups tend to make relatively poor decisions partly because they are susceptible to group-think, usually exhibited as failing to consider wide ranges of information sources or alternative goals. These illogical decision-making processes arise from the anxieties people experience have when faced with major personal and institutional changes. Results suggest that the predominant process is often group think.