Global Campus Task Force Report, UIUC (XGC.07.01)
November 15, 2006

Preface

We as a Task Force were appointed by the Executive Committee of the Faculty-Student Senate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with the charge of considering the Global Campus Initiative as described in the “Final Report” on this matter produced by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs in May 2006, and preparing a report with recommendations to be submitted to our senate for possible action.

We begin by crediting President Joseph White and Special Assistant Chester Gardner with stimulating a crucially important debate about our obligation as a land grant institution to provide wider and more affordable access to higher education learning opportunities, and the role that online courses and programs can play in that context.

We also want to emphasize that we share with them and embrace the vision of an expanded online presence for the University of Illinois that exemplifies our fundamental values of academic quality and innovation.  This Task Force includes several faculty members who have been active in online education – in some cases for close to a decade.  Our report reflects their knowledge, experience and convictions.

President White and Special Assistant Gardner have demonstrated a willingness to engage – with us and with others – in open discussion about this proposal, and to listen and reply to criticisms.  They further have expressed in many forums a preference for a “partnership” approach to the Global Campus proposal.  We believe that they are quite right to do so, and to acknowledge (as they readily and frequently have) that, without strong faculty support and involvement, this initiative will fail.  Without the active involvement of our faculty, with their expertise and experience, the Global Campus cannot have the kind of academic quality with which this University would want its name to be associated.  And without the willing and dedicated involvement of campus colleges and departments, the proposed Global Campus will have no courses and degree programs to offer unless and until it achieves accreditation in its own right – which cannot happen for some time, and will not happen without the accumulation of the sort of record that faculty involvement alone can give it.

We believe that such a genuine “partnership” approach is the only way that the Global Campus can be made to work – and work well, in a manner worthy of this University.  It is in that spirit that we have prepared this report.

The key question for us is whether the Global Campus proposal in its current form adequately reflects that “partnership” approach, and makes sufficient provision for it to be followed. In our judgment it does not (yet) do so.  We also have a variety of other concerns, which we believe are or will be widely shared on this campus, and perhaps on the other two campuses as well.  We therefore state clearly at the outset: We cannot recommend Senate endorsement of the proposal as it stands.  Indeed, in its current form, we recommend that the Senate expressly withhold its endorsement, and urge its reconsideration, with a view to attaining greater consensus than now exists with respect to its model, structure, guiding principles and relation to the existing campuses prior to the submission of any such proposal to the Board of Trustees for approval.  We are unwilling to endorse a proposal that, in our view, as it stands, is problematic in its academic and business plans, has the potential for unintended consequences that could be serious, and leaves much to be desired as a way of translating the aspiration to leadership in online education into reality.

However, we also accompany the expression of our concerns with recommended revisions to the proposal – revisions which, in our view, retain the essential vision and purposes of the Global Campus. We are not wedded to these specific ways of addressing these concerns, and are open to others.  It will not suffice, however, simply to assure us that, once commitment to the implementation of the Global Campus initiative has been made, our concerns will be addressed.  We are not content with the idea of endorsing the Global Campus proposal in its present form and trusting that our concerns will be sufficiently heeded in the course of its implementation.  We note  that modifications to address these concerns are possible, and that the results can be a modified proposal that we and the campuses can endorse. We believe that a Global Campus implementing our suggested changes will be more successful in making this University a respected leader in the development of online education.

We understand that time is short if the Global Campus issue is to be considered and acted upon by the Board of Trustees in January 2007. But we frankly believe that it would be a mistake to take the matter to the Board before there is more of a consensus on the kind of Global Campus we are to have than there is at present.  We believe that the University should be guided by two principles in this matter, as in any new venture: “It is better to do it right than do it quickly” and “Begin as you are prepared to continue.” If “partnership” is to characterize the Global Campus initiative, there is no more important time to practice it than now, at this formative stage.  And there is no more important way for the University administration to demonstrate its commitment to that principle than through responsiveness to the sorts of concerns expressed here, and perhaps to be expressed in the near future by the deans and other parties who will be essential to the success of any such endeavor.

We believe that revisions of the sort we suggest will better serve the vision and purposes of the proposal, both in terms of improving the likelihood that the desired levels of quality and innovation will be achieved by the Global Campus, and in terms of securing wider and more genuine support from the faculty and academic units whose contributions will be indispensable to its success.  At the present time that level of support does not exist. Therefore, we believe that it is premature to present a proposal to the Board for the establishment and launching of a Global Campus before an academic plan has been developed – with the active involvement  of the offices of the chancellors and provosts, and of the colleges and departments whose degree programs would be involved – that has clear expressions of sufficient faculty and academic administrative support and willingness to participate  to ensure its viability.

Issue One: The separation of design and delivery

It is an essential design principle of quality teaching of any sort, whether online or in the classroom, that subject matter and pedagogy are inseparable. Questions of form cannot be isolated from questions of content. Experience in teaching must continually feed back into redesign and reformulation of class content and objectives. In the present context, online technologies should not be thought of simply as a “delivery system” for content derived from somewhere else. And yet this seems to be the dominant model of course development expressed in the Global Campus proposal: regular faculty develop high-quality content, and lower-cost adjunct instructors do most of the delivery (at a rate apparently envisioned to be in the range of $3K-$4K per section). While other, more collaborative models are not ruled out, the basic organizational framework and business strategy of the proposal seem to assume this division of labor: and, indeed, if lowering production costs to achieve “up-scalability” is the primary value, some such division seems inescapable.

Unfortunately, this is not the recipe for quality. It does not reflect best practice in some of the leading online programs on this campus. And it makes no provision for ongoing, continuous improvement in teaching, which requires the close collaboration of course content providers, designers, and instructors.  Moreover, knowledge changes, technologies change, approaches to online teaching are continually changing – and these issues of content, form and pedagogy are highly interdependent.  Quality education – particularly at the envisioned levels of undergraduate degree completion and graduate degree programs – is not a routine matter in which course “content,” once developed, can simply be replicated for courses year after year (to be “delivered” by remote-controlled adjuncts hired on an enrollment-driven basis to do so).  Ongoing development, updating, and redesign will require the continuous involvement of faculty experts in the subject areas.

Additionally, there is also a need for faculty expertise in researching and evaluating online programs – not as a separate step or add-on, but as an integral part of the process of course and program development.

Furthermore, the best online programs on this campus are conceived as a total educational experience, rather than a series of courses to be completed in order to attain a credential. Many of these programs operate with a cohort model that greatly enhances the quality of the educational experience and significantly improves retention and completion rates. This requires careful planning, coordination, advising, and student support that must involve faculty and departments.  It is not just a matter of collecting and delivering a sequence of courses.

A corollary of this argument is that departments and units also need to be centrally involved with technical support (which is often continuous with academic advising and content-related issues). The best campus programs offer such customized technical support, at least in part. In-house IT support is also quite important for ensuring quality and reliability of service. These functions cannot be entirely outsourced to a generic customer service unit.

While the proposal makes clear that involvement with campus faculty is essential during the start-up phase of the Global Campus (when all degrees will be issued by the originating units), it is vague and noncommittal about ongoing involvement after the Global Campus receives independent accreditation (if and when it does so).  As we read it, ongoing academic involvement with the campus faculty as providers of course content would become discretionary once the new campus becomes accredited. In places it appears that the Global Campus could take over or “franchise” campus programs and begin teaching them on its own. Reference in the Global Campus proposal to “work for hire” and recent changes in campus intellectual property rules reinforce faculty concerns that course material they help develop could be taken over and taught without their consent or involvement.

Our concern with respect to the kind and extent of ongoing faculty involvement and control over academic matters that is to be anticipated under the present Global Campus model was heightened when we were informed that regular U of I faculty interested in actually teaching sections of Global Campus courses themselves would be paid at (or only slightly above) the same rate as would adjunct academic personnel.  This almost surely would be attractive to very few of our faculty; and if it is indicative of the level of compensation envisioned for faculty in oversight roles in Global Campus courses, such compensation would be unlikely to attract the kind of sustained and significant faculty involvement in course development, instructor selection and supervision, and ongoing course revision and improvement that a quality program would require. While some individual faculty or departments might be willing to franchise their content for a fee, we believe that most existing online programs on this campus would never participate under such terms.

In summary, the issues of ongoing faculty involvement are not separate from issues of quality, just as issues of teaching form and content are not separable. Courses need to be delivered in real collaboration with those who develop them, because development and delivery represent an iterative loop, so that the experience of teaching the course informs its continuing redesign. Our emphasis on faculty involvement is not due to faculty self-interest or preserving traditional prerogatives for their own sake.  Rather, it reflects our conviction that these partnerships are essential for the very success of the endeavor.

Recommendations:

1. The proposal needs to make clearer provisions for ongoing significant university faculty involvement in, and control over, initial and continuing course development, not as a discretionary option but as a basic feature of Global Campus courses.

2. Departments and academic units must retain control of degree programs and courses they offer through the Global Campus not only during the start-up phase, but also in the longer term.

3. The Academic Council conceived in the proposal needs to be reconceived as something more than an advisory panel, with representation from the regular faculty of the three campuses having the confidence of their campus and participating college administrations and faculties.  Like an Academic Senate or Graduate College, it must have the authority to review, approve, or reject academic courses or programs to insure the highest academic standards.

4. The Global Campus as proposed is intended to offer a variety of undergraduate "degree completion" and graduate degree programs, at least initially in partnership with such programs offered by colleges on our three existing campuses.  Since it is proposed to utilize existing degree programs and courses that may be taken in satisfaction of them, it will be essential that more than a few colleges and departments on our three existing campuses agree to offer their courses and degree programs under the Global Campus's auspices, format (8-week on-line courses) and model (with most instruction being "delivered" by part-time adjunct academic personnel). It has been asserted that there is interest in a number of colleges on our campuses in involvement in the Global Campus.  Since the viability of such an enterprise will depend upon this, we consider it essential for a representative sampling of such prospective participating programs to be identified and described.

Issue Two: The need for a partnership model

One of the serious shortcomings of the current Global Campus proposal, in our view, is its character as a separate fourth “campus” or entity distinct from the three existing campuses.  This might or might not be a justified model if the proposal were calling for an actual new branch campus of the University: but as an online enterprise, we believe that it reflects a questionable understanding of the future of online education. The online future is likely to feature a flexible range of learning opportunities (for all students), ranging from entirely online to entirely in-class, with a range of intermediary options.  Students of the future will expect and even demand this.  Isolating online opportunities in a separate institutional entity is exactly the wrong model for this future. We suggest that the Global Campus (even if it does eventually develop and offer some degree programs on its own) instead should be conceived and designed in a seamless relation with the three existing campuses, for several reasons.

First, the University of Illinois “brand” (in the current manner of speaking) is generated by the quality and reputation of the other three campuses; and however successful the Global Campus may be as a teaching enterprise, there will always be an interdependence of status – both perceived and real – that gives all three existing campuses a stake in how the Global Campus represents this University. For many people around the state, around the country, and around the world, the Global Campus may well become a prominent part of the public face of the University of Illinois – for better or for worse. We must attempt to ensure that it is for the better.

Second, the reputation and impact of the online programs currently run by this campus are directly dependent upon (and in turn reflect upon) the reputation and impact of the departments and faculty who create and support them.  A number of departments across our three campuses have been national leaders in the development of creative and high-quality online programs. These departments have gained visibility and influence by creating high-quality online programs, and vice versa; and there must never be an incentive for decoupling these programs from these departments.

Third, "fourth campus" language fails to capture the significance, or potentially transformative impact, of the Global Campus proposal. A university-wide online teaching endeavor will not be like a campus, where separate articulation decisions can be made between it and the other three. If the Global Campus is successful, its content will migrate throughout the three existing campuses.  (Indeed, it would be unfortunate if this were not to happen.) Therefore, the proposal needs to recognize that the Global Campus will (or at any rate should) become and remain integrally involved with the programs, degrees, and standards of the existing campuses. It would not be an actual fourth “campus,” but rather something integrated with, across and among the campuses.  And it should not be envisioned as (or allowed to become) a free-standing operation with which only a few colleges and departments of one or two of our three campuses have any interest in “partnering.”

Fourth, and building further on this point: the University’s strategy for technology-based teaching and learning must anticipate not only the influence of on-campus teaching upon online teaching, but also the ways in which the latter may be capable of positively influencing the former. Most faculty members who teach online report many influences and benefits that change their on-campus teaching as well.  Organizing our primary and most visible online effort as a separate entity will deprive the existing campuses of a major source of influence bringing new technologies and new pedagogies into contact with campus teaching more generally. This is essential, we believe, if the entire university is to be transformed over the coming decades – as it needs to be. Some departments have expertise in this area, while others may need supplemental technical support and guidance – but every involved department needs to become more knowledgeable about these new possibilities, so that they can adapt them and learn from them, as well as teach with them. The other campuses would not be well served by concentrating and thereby compartmentalizing online efforts in a “fourth campus.”

Fifth, current online programs provide a major source of support for graduate students, both as course designers and as teaching assistants; it has increasingly become an indispensable part of their professional development to acquire these skills. Why should departments outsource these activities entirely to Global Campus staff, depriving their own students of a source of pedagogical and professional development (and support)?

For all of these reasons, and others, we believe that the Global Campus must be conceived and structured in close partnership with the existing campuses, not as a separate entity. The issue of content migration, we believe, is especially salient: the Global Campus curriculum should develop in such a way that it can and will eventually infuse the offerings of all the campuses; but that is very unlikely to happen if the present model prevails and the Global Campus goes its separate way once it receives accreditation.

Recommendations:

1. The Global Campus proposal must provide specific procedures for consultation and coordination with faculty, student and academic administrative leaders of the existing campuses.

2. Features of the current proposal which emphasize the structural separateness and independent decision-making of the Global Campus – both at the outset and subsequent to accreditation – need to be rethought and brought into closer accord with the connections that will need to exist and be maintained with the three existing campuses if the relations between them are to be as healthy and mutually beneficial as they should be.

3. While we are not necessarily opposed to the organization of the Global Campus as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), we feel that the case for doing so needs to be made more clearly, and believe that our institutional interests would be better served by organizing it as a “not-for-profit” LLC rather than as a “for-profit” LLC.  (See Issue Six below.)

Issue Three: Initial and subsequent stage planning

The Global Campus proposal draws a bright line between its policies during its start-up phase and when it eventually seeks (and obtains) accreditation as an independent degree-granting entity. This bifurcation elicits a good deal of faculty suspicion about where this project is heading.

Will Global Campus partnership with campus units cease once their degrees are no longer needed? Will programs and courses initially developed in collaboration be claimed as “work for hire” and taken over by the Global Campus under its own degree status? Will the Global Campus eventually compete in – and even try to dominate – student markets where campus online and on-site programs have a significant stake?

These are not questions about the intentions behind the Global Campus proposal; they are questions about what the design of the present model will permit (and even encourage) five or ten years from now, when those involved in it now may no longer have roles in it. What guarantees are (or can be put) in place to assure that these scenarios do not occur? What incentives do campus units have in helping to build an institutional entity that could eventually be competing with them? These are real concerns.  Why structure the Global Campus in such a way as to make possible and invite problems of this sort in the not too distant future?

We share and embrace the goal of attaining a position of national leadership in quality online education.  We are in complete agreement with the desirability of expanding, upgrading, and enhancing our online programs and instructional efforts; of seeking ways to “scale up” the availability of our best and most innovative programs in order to increase access to them; and of encouraging and helping programs that are not yet involved with online education to move in that direction. As we have argued, this requires a close partnership between the Global Campus and the other campuses, and structures which better reflect the need for and importance of such partnership, and would be more conducive to its development.

Even where the Global Campus might eventually want to develop its own programs and offer its own degrees in areas where campus units are unwilling or unable to do so, this decision needs to be made in a collaborative context. One reason for this is that a unit that is not willing or able to be involved at one time might want to become involved at some later time. Another reason is that separate and distinct GC degree programs could still have impacts on enrollments in corresponding programs on the existing campuses, even if they are aimed at different audiences.  Care must be taken to ensure that the Global Campus and the three existing campuses do not wind up working at cross-purposes with one another.

Recommendation:

Broad issues of articulation and coordination with the other campuses need to be clarified and addressed now, not deferred to a later time – e.g., after problems have already arisen, or when the Global Campus is seeking accreditation. Some details may be unforeseeable; but it is already possible to anticipate areas of unnecessary conflict and harmful competition. 

Issue Four: “Massification” versus “niche” markets

The Global Campus proposal is already making assumptions about student numbers and admissions processes, based on marketing models rather than on academic criteria. While “scalability” is a value in expanding access, lowering costs, and enhancing income, it is not a value that should be allowed to trump all others.

Considerable expertise exists on this campus about developing high-quality, innovative, and scalable programs (including judicious use of supplemental instructional personnel). But the degree of scale that is compatible with other educational goals is an issue that will vary from program to program; some may lend themselves more readily than others to large-scale instruction delivered primarily under regular-faculty supervision rather than by regular faculty themselves.  To commit to the principle that all applicants meeting minimum established standards will be admitted, and with the assurance that sufficient numbers of sections of GC courses will be created to serve the demand for them by all admitted students who satisfy stated prerequisites, puts the academic cart before the horse.

First, we remain highly skeptical that the kinds of very large student numbers envisioned by the Global Campus proposal will be compatible with the values of quality and innovation also espoused in it.  We have real concerns about the reconcilability of a program model that admits everyone who meets a (presumably fairly low) minimum standard with the profile of a university with high standards of admission and correspondingly high expectations for student performance and degree completion.  But even if it is the case that there are large numbers of prospective students who are nearly comparable to those we now admit to our onsite programs and who are capable of comparable levels of performance, we have serious doubts about the possibility of delivering high-quality instruction at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels in most disciplines in a model that relies upon part-time adjunct personnel to do most or all of the actual teaching.  We also question whether there are many departments or colleges on our three existing campuses that would be prepared to allow their degrees to be earned in this way.

Second, decisions about the appropriate degree of scalability, and how many students can be served within a credible framework, need to be made in consultation with the faculty and designers who know the curriculum and instructional philosophy of their courses and programs best. The notion that additional sections can simply be added on, to whatever extent demand for the programs and courses requires, reinforces the very “delivery system” model that we argued earlier threatens quality because it does not reflect best practice in online teaching.

Third, there is considerable evidence that the future of online markets is not in mass programs, designed to serve large numbers, but in tailored programs designed to serve “niche” markets with high-quality customized courses and programs. This is especially (but not only) true for graduate and professional programs. Identifying and developing such programs will indeed require some market analyses, as the Global Campus proposal acknowledges; but it will also require collaboration with faculty attuned to the trends and future needs emerging in various fields and disciplines.

In short, it is possible that many of our existing models of online education are replicable, and that at least some of them would lend themselves to “up-scaling” through the use of appropriately educated, trained and supervised personnel; and we would welcome a Global Campus model that provided a framework for doing so in such cases. But we are extremely wary of the sort of “one size fits all” mentality that seems to prevail in the current proposal: something may work in some types of courses and undergraduate programs but not work in others; and what works for undergraduate programs may well not work for graduate programs.  Again we stress that, if we are to go down this road at all, it is essential that decisions in these matters be made collaboratively, and not settled or forced by policies laid down in advance.  (See Issue Eight below.)

Recommendations:

1. Assumptions based on a business model that would constrain or preempt academic decisions, in ways that would compromise program quality, should not be locked in. 

2. The Global Campus proposal needs to be flexible enough not to require mass numbers to achieve break-even or profitable income. Accommodations need to be made for collaboratively developing customized “niche” programs as well as large-enrollment programs.

Issue Five: The need for innovation

Innovation is just as important as quality; and the Global Campus needs to be about innovation in online teaching and learning, not only reduced costs and increased access (indeed, innovation will be essential to achieving both of the latter).  The proposal assumes a “Blackboard” style of course design and delivery that is already becoming anachronistic for many online programs.  We believe this to be a mistake, and a serious weakness of the proposal.

The key to the future of online teaching and learning is to break down the assumption that the task at hand is simply taking existing course content and syllabi and refashioning them for a new delivery system.  The future requires a vision of varied and flexible teaching and learning opportunities in which all sorts of traditional roles and activities that we think of today as natural or inevitable will be transformed or even made superfluous.

If this University is to be a leader in the development of online education, it needs to position itself at the cutting edge, rather than commit itself to the mass delivery of commonplace-model online courses, with the promise of an “Illinois” degree.  We see the future of online learning as an increasingly collaborative and dynamic activity, in which students will be engaged not only in the acquisition and mastery of knowledge, but also in its production.  Technology will not be primarily a delivery system, but a collaborative, highly social workspace. The Global Campus proposal simply does not convey a sense of the dynamic/evolving nature of online education.  Even the best current approaches and technologies for online education will quickly become anachronistic, as the latest approaches to teaching and learning are transformed by new research, new technologies, and new practices.

Current trends and research into both online and classroom based education have increasingly utilized computer simulations as a learning tool, for example. Simulations enable students to learn more efficiently and effectively while challenging the individual to learn content more completely. Since most simulations represent real-life situations for the individual the content can enable learning in a number of different scenarios, testing after learning, and receiving feedback all in the same session.

For Illinois to be a leader in these areas, it has to be continually experimenting with and innovating new technologies and new approaches to online teaching and learning.Many of the best programs in online education developed at Illinois have been characterized by such innovation and creativity. The business plans and criteria for course development and delivery exemplified in the current Global Campus plan, however, display other priorities, leaving little room and offering few incentives for such efforts.

Recommendation:

The business plan and provisions for involving campus faculty and departments must create incentives and support for innovation and not just efficient course delivery. Specifically, mechanisms for ongoing involvement and development, emphasized elsewhere in this report, need to be established that give faculty an opportunity to bring their best content knowledge, understanding of future trends in their field, and teaching creativity into closer connection with the opportunities created by new technologies and new uses of existing technologies such as simulation-based interactive content.

Issue Six: The “For-Profit” LLC structure

One of the most controversial aspects of the Global Campus proposal is the idea that the Global Campus would be organized as a “for-profit” Limited Liability Company (LLC) within the University system. There are many arguments for and against this proposal and we cannot review them all here. But the following seem most salient for us.

We recognize that the LLC model has been appropriate and successful for Illinois Ventures and the Research Park, and we understand the opportunities for capitalization an LLC represents. Nevertheless, we believe that this model works both for and against the purposes espoused in the Global Campus proposal.

The overarching problem is whether a “for-profit” entity committed to strict “business discipline” can maintain quality, innovation, and intellectual integrity as its highest values, or whether there will be continual pressures (expanding the “customer” base, cutting costs, emphasizing standardization and efficiency above all) which will erode these noble principles.

President White has said, at different times, that the Global Campus will be mission-driven, not profit-driven; that it will be for-profit, but with a nonprofit ethos; and that it will be cognizant of profits, but not profit-maximizing at all costs. This is reassuring; but these assurances need to be reflected in the proposal itself, incorporating stronger protections of these values into the governance structure as well as the governing principles of the Global Campus, whatever its organizational status.

However, many of us do not share the assumption that in order to achieve increased access to an Illinois education a separate “for-profit” entity within the University must be established. There are other models, we believe, that could more successfully serve the purposes of expanding access and lowering costs, while enhancing revenues beyond the level needed to become self-sustaining and enabling the University to benefit from these revenues.

For example, UMass online has been called the most successful large-scale university online program because it has been careful to observe this principle in its design and construction. It is also worth noting that while the University of Massachusetts program is non-profit in its financial structure, it does bring in considerable revenues, increasing from $3.1M in 2001 to $23M for the 2005-2006 academic year. During that same period, online enrollments increased from 5,009 to 21,682. More than 90 percent of the revenues are retained by the UMass campuses to support education and research programs (c.f. http://www.umassonline.net/news/815.html).”

We recognize, however, that there may be counterbalancing benefits to a “not-for-profit” LLC model. We acknowledge ways in which university institutions can be slow to move in taking advantage of certain opportunities, and perhaps a more business-oriented sensibility is needed in this era. We also recognize an emerging future that will feature new institutional hybrids and private/public partnerships that blur all sorts of traditional dualities. A “not-for-profit” LLC may be that sort of hybrid, featuring the best of both kinds of institutional wisdom.

We have been made aware of two potential issues with a for-profit model. One is whether university faculty, in the course of their duties, can properly allocate time to a for-profit endeavor. Most of us have just finished completing the State of Illinois Ethics Training, which emphasized in very strong terms that university time, resources, equipment, and so on, cannot be used for profit-making purposes. Where does this restriction leave us?

Second, it is likely that a for-profit entity will be subject to constraints on the use of copyrighted material that do not apply to governmental bodies and non-profit educational institutions.  We do not know the extent and nature of legal precedents in this area, but clearly, if the Global Campus is a for-profit undertaking, its business plan will need to take this into account, and may expect to pay a high price even for excerpts from copyrighted teaching materials. It will also, very likely, require renegotiating the university libraries' existing contracts with publishers for online databases and full-text resources, which are currently licensed on the understanding that those libraries support a non-profit educational enterprise.

 

Recommendations:

1. We strongly urge the consideration of alternative models for the Global Campus to that of its organization as a “for-profit” LLC.

2. If it is judged that the benefits of a public-private hybrid outweigh the disadvantages, then we urge the adoption of a governance structure for the LLC that balances and protects the interests of academic quality and integrity over profit maximization. Specifically, we believe that there should be a significant number of voting members of the proposed Board of Managers with an academic affiliation with the University, including at least one from each of its three existing campuses.

3.  Copyright issues and potential costs to the Library for licensing databases are serious considerations and must be considered as part the overall business strategy of the proposed Global Campus.

Issue Seven: The primary functions of the Global Campus

President White has said, rightly, that the University needs a system to “turbocharge” our online initiatives: (1) to significantly boost the size and reach of the good programs that we have; (2) to stimulate the development of new programs from the campuses that have a potential to serve a large state, national, and even international audience; and (3) to develop in selected areas new programs where there is neither capacity nor interest on the other campuses. We agree with the value and importance of each of these – in this order of priority.

We strongly favor a model for the Global Campus that can and will help promote and expand the other campuses’ online offerings. We see value in creating a university-wide entity that could (i) provide technical and design support to units in scaling their programs; (ii) help with marketing across state, national and international levels; (iii) facilitate student applications and enrollments; (iv) help with the hiring and maintenance of supplemental instructors who would work with faculty in course delivery teams; and (v) facilitate better planning and coordination across the campuses as online courses and programs become a potential university-wide resource for all students.

A Global Campus of an appropriate sort could certainly centralize certain functions and thereby achieve some economies of scale.  We agree that there is significant room for improvement in this regard.  There may also be good reasons for the Global Campus to take the initiative in proposing, developing and offering new courses and programs that are especially well suited to the interests, needs and circumstances of its emerging clientele; but we are not convinced that separate accreditation is necessary for it to be able to do that.

In our view, the primary emphasis of the kind of Global Campus that would be most appropriate for this University and would be most likely to succeed in partnering with its existing campuses and units should be on building more, larger, and better online programs that are primarily based in units on campuses, rather than through establishing an independent entity that is intended to become an autonomous degree-granting fourth campus of the University as soon as that becomes possible.  Even where a measure of independent discretion may be desirable, there is still a need for decisions to be made in consultation with those affected on the existing campuses, for a host of reasons already emphasized.

Finally, aside from previously stated concerns about forming a separate “fourth campus,” there are a number of other questions about just how separate such an institution even could be. What consideration has there been for student governance? How would essential services and codes of conduct be established to support student success (e.g., a student code, library services, tutoring, writing workshops, counseling, disability support, etc….)? Indeed, an alternative model might be made even more profitable by not needing to expend resources to maintain itself as an entirely stand-alone academic institution.

Recommendation:

Without replicating the structure of UI Online, we believe that the Global Campus’s primary functions should be in collaborating with and coordinating across campus programs, building upon and preserving the value of what units are already doing, rather than duplicating or competing with them.  This includes drawing upon the expertise of those in academic and administrative units of the campuses currently serving in programs similar to those that are or may be proposed by the Global Campus.

Issue Eight: The Business Plan and the Academic Plan

One of the claims made for the Global Campus proposal is that while certain business processes and assumptions are being put in place, within a broad governance structure, detailed decisions about academic matters will be deferred to a later time, and made in consultation with involved faculty.

Unfortunately, what we see is that decisions with significant academic implications are already being made, and locked in place, for reasons relating to the business plan.  For example: decisions have already been made about the length of terms, and thus of courses – decisions that clearly would have to grow out of a coherent academic plan, not precede it. Seven or eight week terms may or may not be judged, in the end, as a suitable compromise between quality teaching and student convenience and flexibility; or they might make sense for some courses or programs, but not others.  The fact that all existing courses on our campuses can in principle be offered in eight-week summer sessions does not mean that all existing courses can appropriately be taught in that intensified format (which both doubles the hours per week that the courses are expected to meet, and reduces by half the number of weeks students have to do the various sorts of readings, lab work, essays, and other course assignments).

The decision also seems to have been made that Global Campus will have a standard “course management system” (CMS), with the only remaining question being that of which one it is to be. But this too is a decision with academic repercussions. Many current campus programs prefer customizable open-source or home-grown options. Adoption of a required CMS is a significant constraint on the very possibility of innovation and new models of teaching and learning that we see as the distinctive virtue of any program worthy of this campus and university.

Decisions about admission and course size policy likewise have already been made.  There may be understandable business or marketing reasons for them.  But they are academically significant decisions.  The same applies to the decision already made that the appropriate venue for engaging an undergraduate audience is through degree completion – even though this is the area most requiring advanced levels of faculty expertise – and that undergraduate degree completion programs may appropriately be offered with no provision for courses outside of the major, other than whatever courses may be both available and appropriate for non-majors in other majors available on the Global Campus’s list of participating degree completion programs.

Our concern here is not to argue that these are necessarily bad decisions: but they are emblematic of a process in which options are becoming more and more constrained before faculty and departments have even gotten involved; in which business decisions seem to be driving academic decisions; and in which the values of quality and innovation already seem to be compromised by another set of considerations.

It is partly for such reasons that the approach of approving establishment of a Global Campus of the sort proposed now, and then working out details and addressing such concerns later, is unacceptable to us. It would seem all too likely that, unless changes are agreed to and clearly expressed in advance of our endorsement, the kind of Global Campus proposed is the kind of Global Campus that we will get.  The history and experience of many involved in the planning process to date have not been encouraging.  And that does not bode well for the prospects of the Global Campus initiative.

Recommendations:

1. We do not believe that substantive academic matters should be settled or locked in place by decisions of other sorts prior to the formation of an Academic Council and agreements with the campus units designing and overseeing these programs.

2. To the extent feasible within the realities of convenience and cost-effectiveness, single models of course provision, admissions, and accountability should not be imposed across the board.  (Otherwise the very benefits of developing diverse, innovative, and flexible approaches will be lost.)

Issue Nine: Risks and exit strategies

All of us hope to see a Global Campus worthy of this University come into being and thrive. We recognize fully the opportunities this initiative represents for us all. But we also are leery of allowing optimism and enthusiasm to carry us away, and of failing to look and think well before we leap. The history of online education has been rife with such failed promises. We respect and admire the high-mindedness and energy that have gone into the planning process for the Global Campus.  But we end with two caveats. One is that the best of intentions, the best of plans, have unintended consequences. We have tried to spell out several of them that particularly concern us. We do not see clear provisions in the Global Campus proposal for anticipating and minimizing these possible effects, and we have frankly not always been satisfied that our concerns have been fully heard or taken seriously.

The other is that despite all of our efforts and good will, the Global Campus – however well conceived – may fail.  In a few years it could be seen as a lost opportunity, a failed experiment, or a waste of money. We sincerely hope this will not turn out to be the case.  If it does fail, however, for whatever reasons, there need to be clearer provisions for the protection of the wider University, its finances, its reputation, and its existing campuses.

Recommendation:

Thought needs to be given now to the sort of monitoring that will need to be done of whether the Global Campus – in whatever form it may be established – is succeeding sufficiently to be worth continued institutional commitment, either in that form or in some modified form, and also to our exit strategy and responsibilities in the event that it becomes clear that a negative decision is warranted.

Conclusion

In this report we have been guided by two questions and principles: (1) What structures and policies will allow the Global Campus the greatest chance to succeed at its mission of expanding access to opportunities for higher learning, within a framework of quality and innovation that is worthy of the name of the University of Illinois? (2) What revisions to the current Global Campus plan are necessary to respond to expressed faculty concerns and to garner the kind of enthusiastic support that is necessary for its success? While these two concerns may not run in exactly the same track, in our view they overlap to a very considerable extent.

We are fully aware of a criticism that has been leveled in the past: that faculty are intimidated by this proposal for the wrong kinds of reasons – that they are resistant to change; that they don’t sufficiently appreciate the importance of expanding access to higher education; that they don’t want to re-examine or fundamentally rethink their teaching in the ways that transforming their courses into an online mode requires.  There is some truth in this.  But it would be a mistake to construe the reservations indicated above as mere expressions of these sorts of attitudes. 

We believe that the proposed model has been developed with far too little input from those on our campus (and presumably also on the other two existing campuses) with the most experience in online teaching, and in positions of responsibility for the very sorts of programs under consideration – from the faculty who teach the courses through the department and college executive officers to the key campus administrators.  The Global Campus initiative will fail if they do not feel that they share ownership of it, and that it is something with which they not only are willing to be associated but want to be associated; and yet few of them have even been consulted about it in any meaningful way to date.  It therefore is not surprising that it is seriously flawed in many respects. 

There is a danger of committing to an implementation plan for a well-intentioned initiative before its ramifications have been thought through as well as possible, and before many minds have been brought to bear upon its possible unforeseen and unintended consequences.  We have no reason to question the intentions and values of anyone associated with the present proposal.  On the contrary: we consider ourselves to be making common cause with them, and share their aspiration for this University to be a national leader in the development of online education.  Our main purpose here is to identify problems with the present proposal, and to be sure that consideration is given to alternative approaches that may better serve the same goals, with less risk of the sorts of negative consequences that would be fatal to the initiative, and damaging to the University.

We acknowledge that the campuses of this university (with the partial exception of UI Springfield) have been slow to take up the challenge of significantly expanding online learning opportunities, and to envision a future in which online teaching will become crucial to our competitiveness (let alone our preeminence) in the academic marketplace. While we have generated several very good (and even profitable) programs, there has not been much consideration given to ways of “scaling up” those programs or stimulating their development across a broader range of colleges and disciplines.

Under such circumstances it is understandable that thought would be given to establishing a university-wide plan, and structure, to do what the campuses have not yet done. But as we have emphasized, the autonomous “fourth campus” approach is not the only way to do that, and may not be the best way.  An alternative that would focus not only initially but also subsequently upon the principle of partnership with academic units, and upon providing a facilitating structure for them to expand and extend their offerings, would preserve and promote the key aims of the Global Campus proposal, but within a somewhat different and less problematic institutional framework.

And so we conclude by emphasizing a word that we have used throughout this report: partnership. If we are to have a Global Campus, it must emerge through a genuine partnership process involving faculty and administrators at all levels, and will survive and flourish only through a partnership of units at all levels on our three existing campuses.  The proposal before us has initiated this process; but in our opinion it is not a proposal that is sufficiently well considered to be ready for launch.  A university-wide online initiative is worthy of institutional commitment only if it has widespread confidence and support on our existing campuses, and if there is substantial interest in their colleges and departments in partnering with it.  Until that is the case, action to establish and launch a Global Campus of the sort proposed will be premature.

Respectfully submitted,

Global Campus Task Force
Abbas Aminmansour
Thomas H. Anderson
Nicholas C. Burbules
Michael C. Hirschi
Faye L. Lesht (co-chair)
Keith A. Marshall
Peter L. Mortensen (ex officio)
Ryan Ruzic
Richard Schacht
Linda C. Smith
Tom R. Ward (co-chair)
Jason A. Webber