Focus On...Distance Learning: Promises and Perils

For a decade I have sought to realize the promise of international distance education while avoiding perils that compromise academic standards -- malfunctioning computers, technologically challenged students, high attrition, network downtime, time zone differences, and the difficulty of replicating face to face classroom interaction live videoconferences. Collaborating with the College of Education’s Dan Wheeler, I launched the Teaching Human Rights Online (THRO) project in conjunction with 1996 UC initiatives on globalization, pedagogy, and instructional technology. Today THRO advances UC/21 goals as part of an undergraduate International Human Rights Certificate initiated in January 2005 and new distance learning classes designed to connect students abroad with UC undergraduates. UC faculty members from 20 departments in five colleges offer elective courses that count toward the new certificate. The College of Law’s Morgan Institute for Human Rights has provided essential support.

Howard Tolley

THRO offers nine interactive teaching exercises that faculty on three continents have used as course modules in their political science, law, international relations, and other undergraduate and graduate classes. In addition to in-class simulations for student debates on issues such as counter-terrorism, genocide, and women’s rights, THRO cases facilitate live internet conferences engaging students from different countries in cross cultural dialog. Initially limited to text-chat exchange, THRO videoconferences are now arranged at nominal cost, enabling students to hold live transnational conversations in the same way foreign correspondents interact with U.S. newsroom anchors on television broadcasts.

Dan Wheeler and I conducted two externally funded Teaching Human Rights Online workshops at UC to train instructors from the U.S. and abroad. A faculty member from the University of Mumbai, India who attended with grant support from the U.S. Institute of Peace has become a vital catalyst in promoting an institutional partnership. In 2000, I was guest facilitator for a THRO counter-terrorism simulation in her classroom. In March 2006, she arranged for me to conduct a training workshop for 25 faculty participants in a computer laboratory on the campus, and she has just facilitated a summer women’s rights intern placement in Bangalore for a UC law student. With the support of vice provost Mitch Leventhal, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been under consideration for a long term distance learning partnership for the delivery of human rights instruction to Indian lawyers, police, civil servants, and students.

During my March visit I was invited to lecture on police/community relations at a conference hosted by the well-endowed Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS). It has the technological capacity to manage the live internet videoconferences THRO has previously done with partners in Europe, and it would be an ideal educational partner for UC. Its director has begun planning for me to conduct a three-day December 2006 workshop on the TISS campus open to faculty from other institutions. He envisions a new human rights degree program that would be enhanced by a distance learning relationship with both our Political Science Department and the law school’s Morgan Institute for Human Rights. India’s education Ministry is providing extensive financial support for new distance learning programs that can reach rural areas and institutions with insufficient faculty, and the National Human Rights Commission seeks to improve training for law enforcement and legal professionals.

I’ve been able to cope with a ten and a half hour time difference and frustrating encounters with all the perils identified above by recognizing that despite Murphy’s Law, instructional technology is steadily improving. Polycom, Elluminate Live, Skype, and Blackboard tools also enhance my increasingly blended on-campus courses. My winter 2006 A&S General Education Ethical Issues distance learning jumpstart class was considerably better than the online class I taught five years earlier. If all goes well, my first human rights distance learning class for new partners in India will begin in June 2007, fulfilling a long term promise to deliver transnational online live instruction that meets high academic standards.