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Click and bricks--transforming education.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Educating tomorrow's leaders requires information age learning environments. Distributed education, distributed learning (DL), or e-learning can create such environments. This article provides a model for DL that targets graduate level education for mid to senior level executives using the pedagogy of interactive constructive seminar. Key components of this type of virtual classroom, to include course design, commitment, explicit expectations, immersion, and time, are addressed from the student and faculty perspectives.

Introduction

When you think of distributed education, distributed learning (DL), distance learning, or e-learning, what image pops into your head? Axe these new phrases for traditional correspondence courses or correspondence courses offered using a CD, DVD, or the World Wide Web? Is it a distributed video lecture where students are separated from the professor, but call in questions after the lecture? Is it a web based lecture students view at a time and location of their choosing? Is it a course where students read the material then answer faculty posed questions, on a one-to-one basis? Is it a web based correspondence course that students can access 24/7, work at their own place and pace? Is it some combination of all the above in addition to other virtual options?

Herein lays the problem. With so many DL models available it is difficult to determine exactly what model an institution is using unless it is explicit in its program description. Most are not. Lacking this information, students find it difficult to assess whether the model used for the curriculum and pedagogy is right for them (Meyer, May 2003). Supervisors find it hard to make informed decisions on the resource support their employees will need. Assumptions are made. Students enroll. Supervisors set expectations and unknowingly shortchange the actual support needed. Professors have ground rules they expect students to follow. The course starts. Early to mid way through, the clashes of the collective assumptions all too often produce frustration, attrition, resource expenditure and perceived failure. These are costs associated with not explicitly defining the deployed pedagogy.

Emulating the collaborative interactive energy of a senior executive level seminar is the DL model The National Defense University's (NDU) Information Resources Management (IRM) College has evolved to over the past 8-years. The College teaches graduate courses for mid to senior military and civilian leaders to prepare them to direct and leverage the information component of national power. The College offers courses students may take through DL (clicks), resident (bricks), or a combination of both, to earn certification in the disciplines of Chief Information Officer, Electronic Government, and Information Assurance. Both bricks and clicks are rigorous and interactive. Numerous major accredited universities accept up to 15 graduate credit hours from the College into designated Master's and Doctoral programs....

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