Journalism at a Distance: The Oregon Experiment

It seemed so clean at the start. The Oregon State System of Higher Education (OSSHE) was offering grant money for using technology in the service of academic productivity. The School of journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon (UO) was looking for ways to make the transition smoother for transfer students and to enrich media studies curricula at state colleges that had been battered by cutbacks from Oregon's tax measures. Three journalism professors received a grant to use the state's new telecommunication network to deliver some of the journalism school's introductory courses to community and state colleges throughout Oregon. The initial proposal looked promising in theory. Prospective transfer students could complete some of their graduation requirements even before they arrived on campus. Students at other colleges would have the opportunity to take media-related courses that were not available at their schools. And students would benefit from smaller classes and easier registration; the demand for seats in those required courses on the Eugene campus would be reduced because some of the enrolled students would be out of town. However, the process of planning and implementing the project proved much more complicated than anticipated. Difficulties ranged from the bureaucratic-philosophical - which schools would get credit with the state for the students' credit hours - to the more prosaic issues posed by the daily use of the now satellite-based technology, where a snowy morning could bring transmission to a halt. This paper analyzes the distance education experience of the University of Oregon's School of journalism and Communication during 1995. Our intent is not only to describe the practical side of the process, but also to discuss the political, economic, bureaucratic, and pedagogical implications of adopting and using a new educational technology. Among other issues, we will focus on the convergence of media technologies in mass communication education; the political and economic imperatives brought forth by that process; the implications of the use of new technology to curricular changes; and the students' response to the now technology. Distance education project Distance education. Klesius and Homan (1997) used two criteria to define distance education (DE) programs: "Students and teachers are separated by distance (geographical, temporal, contextual), and technology is used to lessen or eliminate the distance barrier" (207). Using those criteria, they traced distance education's origins to the mid-1800s, with the emergence of correspondence education in Europe and the United States. The University Continuing Education Association (UCEA), which represents some 425 public and private accredited colleges and universities, has updated that concept by acknowledging that, at the end of the 2Oth century, computer-mediated communication has come to play an important part in most DE initiatives. The association has defined distance education as "the delivery of educational programs to off-site students through the use of technologies such as cable or satellite television, video and audiotapes, fax, computer modems, computer and video conferencing, and other means of electronic delivery (Peterson's Distance Learning, 1997). The U.S. Department of Education issued a report in February 1998 stating that 33 percent of all higher education institutions in the country offered at least one distance education course during the 1994-1995 academic year (the most recent year for which statistics were available). Another 25 percent of schools said they were planning to offer distance education courses in the next three years. An estimated 25,730 classes were offered in 1994-1995 alone, and education analysts are quick to point out that the number has done nothing but go up since (U.S. Dept. of Education, 1998). It is not clear what impact distance education - also known as distributed learning - will have on higher education in the next decades. …