El Salaam Liberal Arts College, a four-year community college located in Beirut is a small liberal arts college that is facing a crisis in the next three years. The Education Department of the the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the primary funding organization, has emphasized that the school must do the following:
1. Create a technology plan that will serve learners through alternative sources of instruction.
2. Revise the curriculum to ensure that minimum standards are met within this new technology.
3. The faculty must be trained to be sure that they are capable of dealing with the new technology.
4. Create an ôOpen Schoolö atmosphere to serve all of the community members.
In effect, these four seemingly disparate challenges are all part of the broad impact that the concept of ôdistance learningö is having on the educational structure of today. Educators increasingly seek new solutions to a myriad of challenges including rising costs, reduced operating budgets, over-utilized resources (from faculty to the physical plant), and determining the best way to use the tried and tested method of the lecture to impart information.
The President of El Salaam College will appoint a task force comprised of faculty members, administrators and local community officials that will be asked to determine the best method to enter into NOVA 2000, the project name given to the task of creating a technology plan.
It is essential that the core requirement for appointment to this task force is a basic Internet literacy, and should include educators, college media specialists, students, and school administrators who are connected to the Internet, who are accessing the Internet via dial-up or another means which is not a direct connection, or who are considering an Internet connection as a resource for their particular academic discipline.
It is also essential that the committee be aware, both philosophic...