Abstract: Although their aim is "education anytime anywhere for anyone," distributed learning programs cannot by themselves solve the access problem. For example, how can multiple distributed learning programs each find, enroll and support enough students (who could be anywhere)? How do potential students find, select and work with one or more such providers (who could be anywhere)? How can network and equipment access be assured for students? Coordination of academic records? Coordination of finances and financial aid when the student is using more than one provider? Proctoring of exams? Consumer protection when no one in the learner's jurisdiction has ever heard of the provider before?

In order to bridge these gaps, many countries are creating "infrastructure for integrated access" -- new types of educational organizations that do not themselves teach but instead mediate the relationships between large numbers of distant learners and large numbers of distant providers. This essay defines this new type of education organization and analyzes some of the policy questions it raises.

Distributed Learning programs create a need for Infrastructure for Integrated Access

In a world of distributed learning programs, any potential learner is surrounded by large numbers of potential providers that might be headquartered anywhere in the world. Any provider is surrounded by large numbers of potential learners all over the world. The word "potential" is problematic, however.

• Can most distributed learning programs afford to do an adequate job of global marketing and recruiting?
• Can most learners get reliable information about the background and effectiveness of all, or even most, distant providers?
• Can each distributed learning program, on its own, provide all four dimensions of learning support for distant learners, no matter where they are?
• If a learner uses more than one distant provider, is there any centralization of credit or academic records or payment?
• Should local and national governments rely on the marketplace to match and support distant learners and distant providers?

Access to education can be considered "integrated" when (distant) learners and (distant) providers each have a wide range of easily accessible choices. In effect both providers and learners can go to one place to find and select what they need: integrated access.

• When access is integrated, learners find it logistically simple and practical to screen many distant (and local) providers in order to choose the most appropriate and cost-effective one(s).
• Providers can easily comb through a large number of adults in order to find appropriate students.
• Finally, when access is integrated, large numbers of distant providers and students can engage in successful education.

The phrase "infrastructure for integrated access" was originally suggested by the image of computers and set top boxes giving each learner access to information about, and offerings from, a huge number of providers around the world. Another evocative phrase is "one stop shopping": a virtual site that, like a department store or shopping mall, offers many choices to the educational provider or learner.

A System on Three Levels

The organizational and technological infrastructure supporting access comes from three sources:

Level 1: General purpose infrastructure consists of the structures and services that are useful for education but that were not specifically developed or maintained for education. The telephone system is an element of this general purpose infrastructure, as are the mails, the radio programs on which a provider might advertise, the highways that commuting students drive, the high schools and public libraries that a provider might use as study sites, most cable television systems, the Internet, and so on.

General purpose infrastructure differs from one region to the next, one country to the next, and from one year to the next. The explosion of Internet access, and Internet service providers, is well-known. The World Wide Web is growing at an incredible rate. A number of countries are initiating large digital library projects in the service of research and education, for example. In Manchester in the UK, twenty electronic village halls now provide community access to various technologies including the Internet. Also changing are the prices charged for those general purpose facilities and services.

Level 3: Single provider infrastructure consists of those parts of the infrastructure that are developed by a single provider for use by itself and its own students. One college might maintain its own classrooms at remote sites, while a company offers computer conferencing and other technologies to enable learners to learn at home, for example.

Add together what the general purpose infrastructure does provide and what individual providers can afford to provide. Unfortunately the sum is often not enough for many students to find learners, for providers to find students, and for the support of their educational relationship, especially now that distributed learning programs are on the rise. In response government, providers and corporations have taken initiatives to create a "middle layer" of infrastructure that many providers and learners can share: infrastructure for integrated access.

FIGURE

Three Levels of Infrastructure for Integrated Access

Level 2: This middle level of shared, educational infrastructure includes those functions that are:

1. developed and maintained explicitly for adult learning and
2. used in common by many providers.

Infrastructure for integrated access is sprouting in many countries at the moment. The rest of our discussion will focus on shared educational infrastructure (level 2) for integrated access.

Functions and Policy Issues

A close look at examples from this first generation of infrastructure illustrates some of the gaps that must be bridged between distant learners and distributed learning programs in order to have education that is truly anywhere anytime for anyone.

The interlinked issues of recruitment, consumer information and consumer protection

The first function of the infrastructure is to help providers and students find, and find out about, each other.

The new infrastructure for integrated access often offers information about providers to learners. Norway has a common database for all distance education programs and courses offered by private distance education institutions. This database is administered by the NLS (National Centre for Educational Resources). NADE (the Norwegian Association for Distance Education) and SOFF (the Norwegian Executive Board for Distance Education at University and College Level) have also put some effort in establishing a complete national data base. In the near future this database will contain information on all distance education courses at all levels from both private and public institutions. (Rekkedal, 1996)

Engineering Education Australia provides another example of this function in action. Engineering Education Australia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institution of Engineers Australia, the leading professional association of engineers in the country. EEA acts as a broker for both Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges and institutes and for universities. It provides over 300 technical and management courses to engineers by distance and open learning. Many of these subjects have been developed by EEA itself with government funding. The professional association is currently considering accrediting of two worlds which would lead to occupation recognition as engineering technologist and, at the master's level, as professional engineer.

Once adults get some kind of standard announcement (e.g., print, online services) about the existence of their options, they may then need more interactive advising service. For example, potential students may profit from working with a counselor of some sort who helps them understand their interests and needs; some of this counseling may be provided in an automated fashion by self-tests of abilities and preferences. In the USA, the proposed Western Governors University is developing both a shared online catalog for distant providers and distant users, as well as a shared assessment structure, reminiscent of the vocational qualification frameworks in countries such as Great Britain and New Zealand.

The infrastructure should also pass information the other way, too - from learners to providers. This is not yet a common practice. The infrastructure should research the needs, wants, capabilities, and equipment of potential learners, and offer this market information to potential providers. Such shared market research would be especially useful for regions that want to support economic development by attracting new providers from the larger world.

Policy questions: This information brokering process poses some difficult policy and implementation problems:

1. Many such systems (e.g., Training Access Points in the United Kingdom) are dependent totally on providers to decide what to say about themselves. The information in the system can thus be rather uneven in quality and coverage.
2. There are conflicts of interest among the parties to asking the questions and the parties answering them. What the provider wants to tell the student about itself (in order to market its instructional program) is often not identical to what the potential student needs to know (e.g., about the quality of prior outcomes, the full range of costs). There may be a conflict between the kind of questions providers want to ask to sell their services and the kinds of information that people interested in the labor market might want to ask. Nor is there even likely to be a neat match between what various providers would like to know about potential students. And there is the question of what learners are willing to reveal or demonstrate about their abilities and access to technology and networks. Should it also verify information and protect learner privacy?
3. Should the infrastructure be transparent so that the potential student judges the quality of each potential provider strictly on the provider's own merits? Or should learners use the reputation of the infrastructure itself to help decide whether the educational options it publicizes are good ones? To pose the question differently, should the infrastructure advertise itself and attempt to create a strong, positive image for its brand name in its marketplace? The answer should depend on whether the infrastructure has its own quality review process. If the infrastructure can vouch for the quality of the potential provider, then the infrastructure ought to create its own public image for quality. On the other hand, if the infrastructure is a common carrier, offering information about all available sources without vouching for the quality of their services or for the information itself, then it ought to be relatively invisible to potential learners. That way the learner is encouraged to check out the providers personally.
4. Providers may or may not have any responsibility to the learners in a particular region or political unit, but the infrastructure (if it is a publicly supported unit) may have such a responsibility. Do needs analyses carried out by the infrastructure attend to issues of regional and learner need, or only to learner capability? For example are the needs analyses constructed in ways calculated to bring services to learners whose employers (if they have any) can't provide educational services, or do they tend to favor further services to those learners who are easiest to reach and to educate? The danger: the easiest way for distributed learning programs to "graduate" highly skilled learners is to recruit well educated, easy-to-reach students in the first place. As each provider's reach lengthens they may all try to compete for adults well-favored in the past, while all ignoring learners who have been ill-treated in the past.

Study centers, networks and equipment access

Students who are distant from a provider often need equipment access, network access, a setting for work in small groups, and a setting for proctored exams. As networks and computers become more important in education, some distributed learning programs rely on home and work to provide these supports. And this can be a successful strategy, to a degree. Cable television systems are growing. Computer access is spreading among the general population, which will gradually alter the mission of such centers. For example computer ownership among students at the Dutch Open university is now around 60-80% (Kirschner, 1996) All these aspects of equipment and network access are features of the general purpose infrastructure (level 1).

But computer access at home and work is not yet universal. nor does computer ownership guarantee access to needed data networks, especially in those many countries where even local telephone calls are metered and expensive.

For this reason various public and private sector organizations are taking steps to create publicly accessible sites for technology access that are shared by more than one provider. At these sites learners can use computers, exchange faxes with the staff, tap computer and video networks, meet in groups, work with teaching assistants or peer tutors, take proctored examinations, and do some laboratory work.

Like many other networks of distance learning sites, the Queensland Open Learning Network in Australia is a state initiative. It comprises over forty open learning centers. Each center is available to any individuals and organizations in the community. Business and industry groups use the network's teleconferencing facilities to link to colleagues in other cities and towns, and to access self-paced courses for employees. Universities and TAFE colleges/institutes use the network for functions ranging orientation sessions to teletutorials. Community members can use the same networks to gain access to information about a range of providers of educational services. In 1995, each center had one IBM and one Apple Macintosh computer with CD-ROM and modem, teleconferencing equipment, fax and video machines, audiographic conferencing equipment, audioconferencing equipment, e-mail facilities, and a satellite downlink. The centers offer 24 hour access to most of their equipment. Similarly, in the United States, the Education Network of Maine offers the means for the public institutions of Maine, and other providers both in and out of state, to reach adult learners across this highly rural state. It does so through a set of video and data networks funded by the state and by funds from the U.S. Department of Education.

Sometimes universities unite to create shared infrastructure. The National Technological University, based in the United States, was founded by a network of universities. Through the NTU structure, they can reach a large number of corporations. The spine is a satellite video network that transmits live lectures from university to NTU and thence to the learners at the corporations.

Finally the corporations that provide general purpose infrastructure occasionally develop special purpose services and infrastructure for education. In Canada, telephone providers in the early 1990s announced the Beacon Initiative that would carry digital educational services. (Tate, III, 49) Jones InterCable, a cable television provider, has developed the JEC College Connection (until recently called Mind Extension University) as a utility to connect a number of universities with a national study body.

Policy questions: Should the state, the infrastructure and providers rely on student ownership of equipment and purchase of network access? On employers to provide access for their employees (what about the poorer employers and the unemployed who would like to learn skills to get new jobs)?

On the other hand, if there is to be a government role, should the government purchase needed equipment? That increases equity of access but creates a continuing burden to maintain technically update to date outreach centers. A leasing arrangement in which a vendor annually provides up to date equipment, software and network connections might at least help build the needed expenditures into annual government operating budgets rather than put them into more uncertain capital budgets. (Gilbert, 1996)

Academic records and payments

Infrastructure for integrated access surrounds the learner with potential providers of educational services. It is likely that many learners will take advantage of more than one such provider. The more learners take advantage of this proliferation of opportunities, the tougher it is to record and credit what they've learned, and to determine what sort of certification each learner may have earned.

Some of the options that should be considered as this infrastructure develops:

• a shared system for "credit banking" and storage of academic records (transcripts, portfolios). Britain is exploring the development of a unified system for student record keeping; issues of privacy and civil rights (among many others) would need to be carefully resolved before such a system could be implemented, however. (McNair, 1996)
• Awarding academic credit: The infrastructure may provide services to help students become more aware of the academic value of their prior experiences, and to assign academic credit for that learning as appropriate. The Australian Credit Transfer Agency (ACTA) has been established recently by the Australian Vice-chancellor's Committee. As their brochure states, "A major role of the Agency will be to hold, or have access to, all publicly available data on credit available for credentialled prior learning in Australian universities. A second, and equally important, role will be to develop data bases on credit available for uncredentialled prior learning, to add extensively to such data by carrying out assessment of individual's prior uncredentialled learning, and to advise universities on the credit which should be granted. In carrying out these roles, ACTA will provide services on a national basis...."
• Payments: Learners who take courses from multiple providers, even multiple campuses in the same university system, today must often make their payments to each provider separately. This complicates life, and may create real inequities in the award of financial aid to students in countries where the aid is paid on the basis of whether study ifs full-time or part-time. One reform might involve making payments, and receiving financial aid, through the infrastructure which would then arrange to pay the one or more providers involved. Edinburgh, Scotland has been exploring the use of educational smartcards for paying for educational services for various providers, for example. (Schuller, 1996)

Assessment and certification

In many institutions today, a student receives a degree based on time spent and total credits awarded. Two students may receive the "same" degree from different institutions and have virtually no courses in common. Or they may have taken the same courses and have received similar grades, yet have relatively different strengths and weaknesses in the field.

To help adult learners use multiple providers in spite of such differences, some countries have established an external system of competence definitions and methods of certification. The United Kingdom and New Zealand are among the countries that are moving in this direction in vocational education. In the United States, Thomas Edison College in New Jersey and the Regents Program in New York have long had as their primary business the granting of academic credit for studies done elsewhere. The proposed Western Governors University would rest on a network of assessment procedures and "franchised" assessment centers spread across the western states. Each of these are meant both to ease the use by learners of mutiple providers while providing creative discipline to the assessment and certifying power of the educators - another, more collective voice on the subject what graduates need to be able to do.

Policy questions: The Romans had a saying, "quis custodiet custodes ipsos" -- who shall guard the guardians? External assessment is no panacea. Among the problems:

• not all courses are created equal, either in a gross sense (some first term physics courses cover more material than others) or in a detailed sense (some first term physics courses use different notations and build from a different conceptual base than others)
• not all courses lead in the same direction. A course in quantitative methods in social science teaches quantitative reasoning and so does a course in calculus, but they prepare students for different things. Employers may each want someone prepared to design and support intranets, but the specific skills they require may overlap yet be significantly different.
• Validity - some vocations, professions and fields are probably more able to assess the readiness of educated people through a limited number of tasks (e.g., summary examinations, theses, assessment center exercises and simulations) than are others. There is a certain risk of validity in placing all the weight of certification on an external system of certification while ignoring what educators have learned about students through long periods of interacting with them. Imagine a student who receives straight "A" marks from his or her faculty, and then fails an external examination by the infrastructure. Which of the two judgments is more credible? That depends on the expertise of the faculty members as scholars, teachers and assessors, their individual and collective time spent with the student, the character of the assessment process and the details of its implementation.

Any infrastructure asked to take on assessment and certification needs to be able to deal with these kinds of complexities of real life.

Multi-function infrastructure

Up until this point, the discussion has conceived each element of infrastructure as separate from the others organizationally. This is in fact the way things often are done. One piece of infrastructure provides information on providers, while another operates a network of study centers and a third gathers and publicizes information on courseware. It is also possible, of course, for a single organization or government unit to support several elements of this infrastructure for integrated access.

Open Learning Australia is an ambitious example of multi-function infrastructure. OLA currently brokers the services offered by 29 Australian universities and TAFE colleges, many of which offer students pathways to some of their certificates, diplomas and degrees. OLA is also assisted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which broadcasts, and in some instances produces, a range of television and radio programs which complement many OLA units. Open Learning Australia has no entry requirements and no limit on places. It offers students the flexibility of studying in any or all of four study periods each year and also allows them to pick and choose units without any requirement that they complete a whole course or qualification. OLA is a sizable enterprise, with 22,394 undergraduate unit registrations in 1995. It also offers 19 graduate programs. Half of its students are taking higher education courses for the first time. Although it relies mainly on print and television (broadcasting 24 hours of ABC TV, 4 hours Radio National each week), 15% of its units are supported by Computer Aided Learning. OLA also has a substantial side benefit in informal learning ; a million Australians view Open Learning programs each month.

Engineering Education Australia, discussed above, is also a multi-function infrastructure. The EEA in 1995 offered, among other functions:

• credit for prior learning
• the final year of the TAFE Diploma of engineering as an accredited private provider
• Single subject enrollments
• Customized in-house courses and workshops
• satellite-delivered learning from the National Technological University in the USA
• credit for a distance education MBA offered by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia with Deakin University.

Despite the fact that it is a unit of a professional association, EEA is an accredited provider in its own right of the Graduate Diploma of Engineering.

In Norway recently, institutions of higher education and specialized distance education institutions have begun to collaborate in supporting infrastructure for integrated access: the institutions of higher education have the academic responsibility for the programs and administer exams and grant diplomas and the distance education institution takes care of administrative systems and all activities connected with submissions etc. (Rekkedal, 1996)

In the United States, the JEC College Connection (formerly Mind Extension University) provides many of the functions of the infrastructure for integrated access. So does IMLearn, a for profit company that partners with universities and other providers to provide many of the functions of materials development, operations management, and marketing for distance learning.

The proposed new Western Governors University, currently under development, also would support multiple functions, as described above. As proposed, the institution would not employ its own teaching or assessment staff; these functions would be carried out on contract. However, the WGU would commission the creation of its own courses of study, award credit, oversee the quality of teaching, and undertake other functions described above. The Western Governors University plans to seek accreditation so that it can offer its own degrees; it will contract for certification services along with other services. It has the defining attributes of both a university and infrastructure for integrated access.

Policy question: when a single organization takes on all these functions, the question of quality control becomes even more critical, especially when some of these functions are in turn "outsourced" to other organizations. Who is legally and ethically responsible for quality of courses of study? Who is responsible for the fate of the learner, other than the learner? The National Technological University deals with this by creating faculty curriculum committees with participation from its various sponsor universities. We need other models, too.

Who Pays? Who Controls?

The promise of distributed learning programs is "education anywhere anytime for anyone." Yet such programs cannot work adequately with potential learners without efficient, effective infrastructure for integrated access.

Who should finance and control each of the functions of the infrastructure described above?

• the private companies who offer the general purpose infrastructure services (as is true for the JEC College Connection, which was created by a private cable television company)?
• the educational providers (as is true for the National Technological University, which was created by a consortium of public and private universities)?
• the government (as is true for Open Learning Australia?)
• Or should the infrastructure for integrated access be self-supporting, gathering fees from learners and perhaps also from providers who purchase its services? (one possibility mentioned for the Western Governors University)

Open access to infrastructure? The question of finance relates to issues of control and "carriage." If any unit of this infrastructure has government support and a practical monopoly, does it have the right to refuse to "carry" educational services because it judges them unfit? On what grounds should it be allowed to offer or forbid such service if public funds are being used?

From writing to campuses to distributed learning and campus-based education -- there has been a clear progression, forced by our need to educate an ever greater variety of learners in an exploding range of fields of knowledge. Each step of the way more experts became involved, and more students. The professionals played a greater variety of roles than before, and often worked at greater organizational and physical distance from one another as they participated in the student's education. This distance raised new problems, and organizational structures were devised to bridge it.

How this newest generation of infrastructure for integrated access will develop is still open to question. But they already do exist and they are growing.

References

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