Multi-university distance learning initiative expands

Another prestigious education institution will be joining Princeton, Stanford and Yale in a joint venture to develop distance-learning courses via the Internet.

Princeton Provost Jeremiah Ostriker announced last week that the University of Oxford will be joining the group established to offer a variety of courses online to alumni, parents of current students, faculty and staff.

Princeton Associate Provost Georgia Nugent '73 — the University's representative to the the committee of administrators that is developing the program — said the group will be run by a separate board of trustees made up of senior administrators and trustees from each of the participating schools.

Ostriker and University trustee Heidi Miller '74 will represent Princeton.

Charles Junkerman, associate provost and dean of continuing studies at Stanford, noted that the future of distance-learning remains uncertain. "This is completely unknown territory," he said.

Once the directors of the distance-learning program announce their chief executive officer later this week, the project is expected to take a more definite form. "[The CEO] will be the one to decide the infrastructure and format of the program," Junkerman said.

He said he does not know how popular the distance-learning program will be. "Whether people will be interested enough to do this for their own intellectual pleasure is still to be seen," Junkerman said.

Nugent, however, cited the success of Princeton's own online alumni courses, such as the popular "Walks in Rome" class offered on the Internet by art and archaeology professor John Pinto.

Nugent said more than 2,000 University alumni already have used Princeton's online resources for courses.

"Though that is certainly not our entire group, the interest is clearly out there," she said.

The distance-learning alliance is not, however, the only project of its kind in the country.

Several universities have started similar programs during the last few years — notably Columbia and Cornell universities.

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Fathom, a for-profit project sponsored by Columbia University, will offer information and research from the 14 involved institutions via the Internet by as early as the end of this year.

Columbia also uses Columbia Media Enterprises, its digital technology arm, to put classes and research online, according to Columbia spokesman Vergil Renzulie.

"We didn't want to sit back and wait until someone told us how to put media on the Internet, so we created our own marketplace," he said.

While Princeton's alliance will offer its resources only to people affiliated with the four universities, both Columbia and Cornell will offer their courses to the general public through a tuition-based program.

"Initially, the program included the whole [academic] waterfront. But since 1997 we have narrowed the scope to include, at first, already-existing executive education programs," Cornell Dean of University Faculty J. Robert Cook said in an interview yesterday.

No academic credit will be offered via Cornell's distance learning service — dubbed e-Cornell.

Cornell's distance-learning program is still in the planning stages, though there is some faculty concern over ownership rights and financial control of the service, according to Cook.

"I would have preferred the alumni initiative that Princeton has used, and I urged the faculty to pursue that option," Cook said.

But Princeton officials said they remain optimistic about their own distance-learning program.

"I think the entire group believes that there is clear value in the combined resources of these four leading research universities, not only in faculty, but also in library and technological resources," Junkerman said.

Nugent said she expects the University to benefit from its distance-learning project.

"We do not see offering alumni courses as taking away from what we can do here at Princeton," she said. "We hope that what we are doing in this initiative has enhanced and will continue to enhance what is happening on campus."