These system models have influenced the development of mastery learning, programmed and autotutorial instruction and computer assisted instruction. Telecommunication technologies are providing institutions that have distance education programs with new options in response to learner s changing demographic profiles. The explosive growth of corporate participation in formal education and training is illustrated by the fact that for 1992, American corporations budgeted 126 million more hours of employee instruction than the previous year. This is more growth in just one year than the enrollment growth in all the new conventional college campuses built in the United States between 1960 and 1990. On the virtual campus, academic productivity is the central rationale for infusing information technology into the educational process.
Productivity is defined as the ratio of outputs to the resources invested to produce it.
Van Dusen claims that there are two distinct reform philosophies emerging from the literature, each from quite different policy perspectives. The first approach considers educational institutions to be evolving, with technology performing a support function. The second approach considers educational institutions to be undergoing a revolution, with technology itself responsible for many of the dramatic changes taking place. The University of South Dakota decided to make a ten percent cut in its currently programs and services to reallocate resources to the Center for Instructional Design and Technology. Degree programs in the Liberal Arts such as Classics and Physics were cut to fund this technology initiative.