As fall semester 2008 approaches, President Steven C. Wheelwright pointed out BYU-Hawaii is steadily developing the framework to use distance learning — also called distributed learning or education — to help extend the reach of the university in a cost-effective manner and better prepare a new generation of students.
"Distance learning in most institutions fills one or more of three different roles," he said. "Our number-one priority is to help students be better prepared, especially where we have so many coming from such diverse backgrounds. It gives us a way to see if they're prepared to study and learn in English, and be successful in a university environment."
"The second role is to help people who left their studies for various reasons and would still love to complete degrees, but they aren't able to be in our on-campus classrooms. It turns out we have approximately 9,000-plus alumni who have attended BYUH but we have no record of them graduating. We would love to offer as many of them as possible the chance to complete their degrees."
President Wheelwright said in its third role distance learning benefits the students currently on campus, particularly where they're employed and might have difficulty scheduling classes around work responsibilities. "Our hope would be that over time every student would take a distance learning course plus their regular classes on campus. This would increase the average course credits earned each semester, allowing us to use our resources much more effectively and enabling students to graduate sooner," he said. "Even if a student saves only one semester on campus, it would allow us to fill that seat with a new student, that much sooner."
"We have already identified a number of courses and developed a set of principles we'd like all of them to meet," he continued. "For example, we want to make sure all of them are legitimate university-level courses, that the credit-hours match the amount of work to be done and that they are at a minimum, equivalent to taking a class on campus."
"Because English is not the native language of many students from our target area, we also want to make sure that the initial courses we develop are EIL [English as an International Language] oriented. That is, we want our courses to help students learn the English they need to be successful in all of our general education classes."
President Wheelwright added that all BYUH distance-learning classes will have a "common look and feel. We've decided that our on-campus learning management system, Blackboard™, is the system we'll use for distance learning as well. We've also decided that each class development team should have an instructional designer who would be the project leader, a faculty member who would be the content expert and eventually teach the course, and a staff IT [information technology] person to make sure everything works online appropriately. The team will take existing courses and create online versions, which students on campus could also enroll in. For example, we might have 10 students on campus and 10 in the target area taking one of these classes."
"It's important to know these are not independent study classes: Online delivery is the way to think of these classes that will be conducted on a set semester schedule. There will be weekly assignments due, a midterm exam and a final paper or exam — all of the things found in an on-campus class," President Wheelwright stressed. "The distance students will be expected to participate online based on a problem-centered model where they apply what they're learning. Some of that engagement will be with the faculty member, some on their own that they report back on, and some with other students."
President Wheelwright explained that every distance learning student would have to take an introductory course on how to use Blackboard and all the online tools; and he added that as the courses gain enough momentum, "we will have weekly facilitated student groups in major cities in our target area. It turns out that every major city in our target area has enough single adults that, once courses are up and running, we could get students together with a facilitator — not necessarily a content expert, but someone who knows Blackboard and the basics. They might be alumni, non-working spouses or senior missionaries. We also expect we'll use adjunct faculty to assist with some of the teaching."
"We're going to press forward with this initiative as fast as we think we can while maintaining our standards," he said. "Obviously, there are a lot of other things going on at BYU-Hawaii at the moment, but we clearly have people interested and committed to doing this."
"I think we're getting real traction on a sustainable path. I'm pleased that we've converged to a development model and project management system," President Wheelwright said. He added the university is also working with Latter-day Saint area presidencies to identify Seminary students and young single adults who might be interested in participating, "to get them thinking about BYU-Hawaii."
"Remember, our primary goal is better prepared students who can be successful in our learning environment. That's why we're doing this now. As we move toward our year-round calendar in 2009, we're going to need even more of these students. They're our number-one targets."
— Photos by Monique Saenz