The goal of the course is to provide students with a foundation of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are required by a competent practitioner of distance education. Students explore the critical concepts and issues identified in the distance education literature and critically examine the history and theories of the field. The course was developed by Ulrich Bernath (Germany) and Eugene Rubin (U.S.) in collaboration with Börje Holmberg (Sweden) and Otto Peters (Germany). This course must be taken in the first term the student is enrolled in the program. It is taught in multiple sections by a team of faculty with Michael Beaudoin (U.S.), Ulrich Bernath, Thomas Hülsmann (Germany), Christine Walti (Germany/U.S.) and visiting experts Börje Holmberg (Germany/Sweden), Otto Peters (Germany), and Michael Moore (U.S.).

This was first course I took at UMUC. I started out a bit frustrated with what I thought then to be the limits of how we were to define distance education. I thought that our textbook, Distance Education: A Systems View by Moore and Kearsley (1996) was, by virtue of its publication date, out of date, not being able to take into account the recent explosion of online technologies.

But with the Moore and Kearsley, along with the dozens of additional seminal articles on distance education and distance education theory, I received an excellent grounding here in the historical / theoretical legacy of the field.

Perhaps the best, certainly the most interesting, part of the class was our conversation with Otto Peters and Borje Holmberg. In my online conversations with them, neither one rejected out of hand my suggestions that online was redefining DE, although they both preferred to consider online simply a new stage of DE.

The real force of my argument, I thought, was that the true revolution going on in DE was not occurring in DE institutions, but in traditional campus-based institutions.

At any rate, in this course, I began to realize that my point-of-view had been limited by what I saw going on in the United States, and that US DE was (is) quite different from ODL in much of the rest of the world.

We read dozens of articles for this class, but the one that has particularly stayed with me is James Hall's 1995 article in Educom Review, "The revolution in electronic technology and the modern university: The convergence of means." This article contributed significantly to how I tried to define convergence in my final paper; that is, convergence not just as distance education institutions and campus-based institutions beginning to use the same pedagogies and process, but also convergence as a term signifying the historical evolution in the organizing concept of the university ("from convocation to convergence.")

The assignments (represented below) were a bit frustrating for me, limited as they were by low word count restrictions, but I did the best I could within the limits of the assignment.

This course examines the process of instructional design and development in a distance education and training context. Students critically evaluate the relationship between instructional design and technology. Various models of instructional and course development are considered (e.g., large vs. small scale course development, centralized vs. decentralized course development, individual faculty/author vs. team course development). Students apply the instructional development process by developing a small instructional unit. Special emphasis is given to web-based instructional design and delivery. This course was developed by Eugene Rubin and Inez Giles (U.S.). Beginning in Fall of 2002 this course is taught by Som Naidu (Australia).

The above course description does not adequately convey how committed (oriented?) this course was to Instructional Systems Design.

But despite the philosophical problems I had with this class, it was definitely a lot of fun, primarily because I enjoyed so much engaging in conversation with Gene Rubin. He challenged me fiercely and almost always got the best of me.

When I took this class, I was far more ideologically committed to constructivist approaches than I am now. In 2003, I resisted the behavioral assumptions and prescriptive implications of the ADDIE approach we were forced to use. In 2008, I'm far more agnostic in regards to learning design.

But my focus is learning design. Not systems design. And I do think this class might have been better presented had it been less about traditional Systems Design and more about how to design online learning activities appropriate to recent learning theories.

On the other hand, for better or worse, the OMDE program was designed with a philosophical commitment to systems design, and this course certainly fulfilled the instructional design component of that approach. Further, I did get a solid grounding in ISD. And I do see its place in traditional (industrial/fordist) Distance Education systems of course development, even though I mostly want to argue against those approaches.

I enjoyed the class experience, but I'm not particularly proud of the product I have for this class.

The functions of distance education within the organizational structure of educational institutions, businesses, non-profit organizations and government are examined. Students analyze operational, logistic, and regulatory systems within distance education and training organizations. A range of theories pertaining to systems in general, systems in education, systems needs in distance education, and systems approaches to organizational development are introduced. This course was developed by Eugene Rubin, and is presently taught by Yolanda Gayol (U.S./Mexico).

This course, fallen, apparently, by the wayside in recent OMDE program redesigns, (re)introduced me to Systems Philosophy. I did a lot of outside reading not reflected in the assignments or conversations.

But without question, the most enduring set of ideas to come out of this course for me was the series of 13 articles in Educational Technology written by Banathy under the general heading of: Comprehensive systems design in education from March 1991 through August 1993.

• After reading that extraordinary series, I began talking about pedagogies of design as opposed to pedagogies of delivery
• Also, after Banathy, I started using the phrase "designing environments for student-centered learning," and that phrase became a key phrase in the mission statement I developed for my department at McDaniel college.
• To my mind, Banathy was definitely the best thing to come out of the systems design slant of these early OMDE courses.

Several of the assignments in this class were about process--putting together lists, components, etc. Looking back on it, I'm more proud than I have a right to be about "Components of a Distance Education System." I learned Visio in order to produce that one .GIF file

This course focuses on planning and management of learner support and interaction within modern distance education and training systems. Included are all types of tutorial and instructional assistance (mentoring, tutoring, teaching), advising and counseling services, library, and administrative services (admissions, registration, prior learning assistance, credit coordination, help desk). In this context, students explore topics such as learner retention, the role of evaluation and applied research, serving learners with special needs, and practitioners’ professional development, and develop an understanding of contextual factors that determine the choice of particular learner support models. In the final course unit, students work in teams to custom design learner support services for an educational or training provider. The course was developed by Jane Brindley (Canada) and Alan Tait (U.K.) and is taught by Jane Brindley and Christine Walti. This course was OMDE624 until Spring 2002.

I liked how this course was laid out. It was incredibly reading intensive, but most of the reading was front-loaded; that is, we had to read 25 articles or more from a list and create an annotated bibliography, all in the first few weeks of class. Then we spent the balance of the class applying what we had read in a series of group and individual projects.

At this point in my academic/professional career I was intensely interested in digital portfolios. One of papers I did for this class reflects my interest.

At McDaniel, I developed this McDaniel Digital Portfolio Web site (the Web site is old and no longer functional with official www.mcdaniel.edu) to support students who were doing online portfolios. I also set up a process support by enrolling each student into a Blackboard Digital Portfolio class.

One goal was to expect basic technical skills, but not require design and layout skills at the very beginning. To that end, I designed several templates--starting points for each student. Among the ones I designed:

|| Template One || Template Two || Template Three ||
|| Template Four || Template Five || Template Six ||

One other thing I remember about this class was struggling with the tone my instructors expected in my writing. I was given a B+ on my Annotated Bibliography (I hated getting Bs on papers, and I got a couple in this program) because my tone was too personal and opinionated. I was also advised to use to more passive sentence constructions when discussing my reactions. The author disagreed, but since he was a student, he complied.

The course places the economics of distance education in the larger context of economics of education. A variety of methodological approaches (including cost/benefit and cost/effectiveness analysis) are applied to the distance education context. A variety of costing techniques and economic models are explored and applied to different institutional forms and levels of distance education. This course was developed by Thomas Hülsmann. It is taught by Thomas Hülsmann with visiting experts Greville Rumble (U.K.) and Tony Bates (Canada). The title of this course was changed in Spring 2003. Before that it was OMDE 606 Economics of Distance Education.

This was probably my most difficult class. Simple reason. It had algebra. But Dr. Hülsmann provided an extraordinary number of costing tools, all of which I have kept, referred to and used over the years.

After struggling with the assignments, and, with help, finally getting things pretty much right, I had the confidence to make cost projections in a couple proposals I made for graduate certificate programs at McDaniel College. I used what I learned in this class and Dr. Hülsmann's formulas for determining profit by using fixed costs, variable costs per students and number of enrollments.

 

Distance Education/Training is emerging within a highly competitive environment. Not only does the manager need to know about cost effectiveness issues, but he/she also is often responsible for such issues as marketing (local, national, and, increasingly, world-wide), insourcing vs. outsourcing, balancing the strong entrepreneurial focus of distance education within more traditional service-based organizations, and whether the distance education unit should be integrated or self-supporting. The course includes emphasis on the development of business and marketing plans and the use of common business analysis tools. In addition, students explore the rapidly expanding role of private and publicly traded education companies that are marketing new distance education products and services to the consumer market. This course was developed and is taught by Eugene Rubin (U.S.).

This was the most unconventional of all the OMDE classes and perhaps the most fun I had in the entire OMDE series.

For better or worse, I came to most of the OMDE courses with varying degrees of familiarity. I had taught online, designed online courses, written online courses, supported online faculty, promoted policy in a DE institution and a campus-based institution, helped implement policy in a DE and campus-based institution, etc. And No question, I learned a tremendous amount in my OMDE courses, but I ame to each of them them with at least some familiarity in the field.

Not so with OMDE 622. While I had done consulting work (government agencies, large and mid-size corporations), helping to devise online visions and strategies for training, marketing, and instructional design, I knew very little about market capitalization, Price/Earnings ratio, Price to Sales ratio, Debt to Net equity, Return on Equity, etc. etc. This class gave me a new vocabulary. For this class, I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, Investors Daily, and I began reading books and articles in a field I had previously paid only marginal attention attention to.

One particular thing I liked about this course was how its structure allowed us room to go in directions of our choosing. Although they were not assigned, books I read for this class include:

• Seeing What's Next by Christensen, Anthony, and Roth
• The Gorilla Game by Moore, Johnson, and Kippola,
• The Innovators Solution by Christensen and Raynor
• Good to Great by Collins
• Kotler on Marketing by Kotler.

I'm using Christensen's models of prediction for my final project.

Terry Hilsberg was a guest lecturer for a couple weeks. The online conversation with him was, as I remember, extraordinary.

The Web site of the fictional business "Performance Learning Designs" does not seem all that special to me, and I'm not sure why it was a part of the class. Actually, I had completely forgotten about it until I started gathering materials for this portfolio. Apparently, as an Upstairs Downstairs fan, I had a little fun creating my fictional team.

This course is an exercise in stocktaking. It examines the purposes for which distance education has been used and the audiences reached. It analyzes the roles played by international agencies including bilateral and multilateral funding agencies, the UN family, regional bodies, and specialist agencies. The goal of the course is to develop and use typologies in order to examine the advantages and disadvantages of a range of organizational models for distance education at various educational levels, relating to audience, educational purpose, and choice of technologies. This course was developed and is taught by Thomas Hülsmann in collaboration with Hilary Perraton (U.K.).

For a while, I was hoping I might be able to change careers and get a job with a UN agency or large distance education institution that participated in cross-border education and/or "delivered" courses to developing countries. My intention was to get a Masters in Distance Education with a focus on developing countries. At any rate, I took this course with great pleasure and the full intention of using it to advance my career.

Also, I wanted to take every course Thomas Hülsmann taught.

And though I have changed my mind in recent months about changing my career focus, I had a great time in this course and learned much about such topics as sustainable development, the failures of neo-liberalist structural adjustment policies, etc. The annotated bibliography of my project is a fair indication of the sorts of articles and books I read.

I set up my final class project (on Teacher Education in Mexico) for this course thinking I would advance it in OMDE 626 (Teacher Education in other Latin American countries) and even more so in OMDE 690 (Teacher Education in all of Latin America).

But in 626 I turned my focus to GATS and cross-border education. And in 690, I have obviously turned back to issues and policies dealing with US institutions and students.

Even so, this class began quite a learning journey for me.

Without question, OMDE 625 and 626 have been my favorite two classes in the program.

 

This course is explorative in character. It examines the range of educational technologies that assist institutions in reaching various off-campus audiences (from print, through broadcasting to satellite links and computer-based systems). The course examines the use of computers in school for (a) information science and computer studies (b) application to the general curriculum (c) access to internet (d) school linking. It gives an assessment of current and planned ventures including emerging rich-country policies and institutions, the changing role of the private sector, the role of conventional universities in relation to e-learning and the new international players (e.g. African Virtual University). The course was developed by Thomas Hülsmann and beginning in Fall 2003 is taught in collaboration with Michael Moore (U.S.).

My favorite class in the OMDE program.

This was one of those classes that changed the way I think about the world, primarily because it was for this class I read Jeffrey Sach's The End of Poverty, one of the most powerful books I have ever read. But I was exposed to so much else as well--primarily issues dealing with GATS and cross-border education.

The Annotated Bibliography for my final class project indicates the sorts of readings I did. And my final class project gives a fair indication of my attitude and approach to GATS and globalization.

Perhaps most significantly, I developed in this class a more global point-of-view; that is, my opinions about development, the World Bank, neo-liberalism and the like are not now based primarily on US interests, but on international interests.

Also, in this class, I became a passionate advocate for One Laptop Per Child.

This course explores the role of technology in the design, development, and delivery of distance education. Students critically examine the relationship between technology and the goals of the educational/training organization. Various uses of technology are explored in the areas of course development, asynchronous and synchronous distance course delivery, and management/administration. The relationship of information technology and distance education is explored, and special emphasis is placed on computer-based technologies. This course was developed and is taught by Judy Roberts (Canada).

This is the only course in the entire program I wish I didn't have to take. No fault of the course design or the instructor, it was just that there was nothing new for me here. I had used all these systems before in my own teaching, learning object development, or faculty support.

It was, I suppose, nice to include synchronous systems in a program almost ideologically committed to asynchronicity. Whether that's the current OMDE leaning or not, I do tend to share a preference for asynchronous systems in online teaching and learning. To my mind, synchronous systems are primarily associated with pedagogies of delivery. My preference is pedagogies of design.

It is fair to say I did have difficulty with the assignment restrictions. The rubrics were, I thought, far too restrictive and prescriptive. Again, this is not a reflection of the course design or the instructor, just that I wanted to produce more than the rubrics allowed.

I'm not especially proud of any of the papers below. For better or worse, they just fulfilled assignment rubrics.

This course introduces students to the organization, management, and administration of distance education systems. Specific issues include roles (both traditional and unique), leadership, human resource management, employee relations, the role of information technology, student support services, faculty/staff development, inter-institutional collaboration, funding, delivery systems, and policy. Both the education and business environments are explored in this course, and students gains an understanding and skills that allow them to function effectively in either type of organization. This course was developed and is taught by Eugene Rubin and Jim Gelatt (U.S.).

This was the last course I took in the program (fall 2007) before this capstone class. I had put it off to the very last, hoping I could instead get credit for a Leadership course I took at George Washington University in their Educational Technology Leadership program. As it turned out, however, I was extremely glad I took this course. This class gave me a new "language," a new set of tools, a new way of thinking about and talking about organizational issues and situational leadership.

I particularly liked the text, Management of Organizational Behavior - Leading Human Resources by Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson. The models of situational leadership in that text have already proven useful to me at my current position at McDaniel College, and are likely to continue being useful to me throughout the remainder of my career as a middle-manager in a higher education institution.

In this class, I first encountered Otte and Banke's article, " Online learning: New models for leadership and organization in higher education." This became a key article for my final paper as I have tried to define convergence. Otte and Banke use the term to describe the phenomena of both DE and campus-based institutions moving towards the same technologies, pedagogies, processes and markets.

 

This capstone course requires students to engage in two significant tasks: (1) create a personal distance education portfolio to serve as an ongoing professional resource, as well as a useful job search tool, and (2) develop and document a case study/project for an organization in the area of distance education and training. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an opportunity to display and practice a variety of skills and knowledge in the area of distance education and training. This course is taught by Eugene Rubin, Michael Beaudoin, and Ulrich Bernath.

My work in this class was focused on developing this portfolio and a final project. I did my project in two parts. Part 1: a paper on Distance Education and Online Teaching and Learning in US Higher Education, which was submitted for approval. Part 2: an attempt at designing four courses that can serve as a graduate certificate in Online Teaching and Learning, which was not formally submitted for approval (linked from below).

We dropped Part II. Too much, really, to incorporate into a final project. And it is true that while I did some of the design and much of the work on the modules this semester, I did most of the design work prior to this semester. I include links to some of the course components for the four classes below.

In the latter weeks, the real focus was on my paper, which is, in a sense, an argument against Distance Education studies (but only in certain contexts).

I realize, of course, I tilt at giants in challenging the Moore and Kearsley concept of DE. But my challenge is not on their work as a whole; my challenge is that their work is not adequate to serve the needs of teachers and practitioners in US higher education institutions who go into the field of online teaching and learning.

Dr. Bernath did not agree with my arguments. But his challenges were fair, scholarly, and designed to help me better make the argument I wanted to make. I appreciated that.

The course drafts that were dropped from my final project: