Often heralded as the savior of higher education, technology has emerged to the degree where the scenario of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, in which a computer takes over the space ship and its crew, is similar to distance education technology which threatens to take over conventional real-world institutions of higher learning. Distance technology is heralded by technology and education advocates as a means of eliminating time, space, and economic barriers to higher learning. Students, adult learners, the handicapped, and others can now gain access to accredited online college courses and earn four-year degrees through many institutions. Curricula is now packaged and sold as software and students either learn on their own in the comfort of their living rooms or interact with real-world classroom environments via two-way video technology. Corporate America and others have caught on to the new commercial value of information and education packaged as product “On-line instruction and distance education have swept through institutions of higher education with astounding speed. Now, commercial interests are avidly pursuing those developments…While online courses offered by traditional institutions raise a number of questions about the equivalence and quality of offerings, and about faculty responsibility for the curriculum, totally on-line institutions raise questions about the meaning and preservation of higher education itself” (Perley and Tanguay, 1999, 1). Thus, distance education and online curricula are ideas whose time has come. However, despite the ability to provide education in this new format, the same pedagogic disagreements over content and the best means of education delivery remain among academia.
Changing lifestyles, technological innovation, and other trends in American society have supported the advent of distance education via online course offerings and virtual universities and institutions of higher learning....