Princeton Quits Distance Learning Alliance

Princeton has dropped out of an elite distance learning collaborative, announcing last week that it will join schools like Harvard and MIT in opening up its online academic resources to anyone who wants access.

Princeton had been among the founding members of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, which now comprises only Stanford, Oxford and Yale. The group’s mission was to combine the academic resources of the four universities to provide online courses in the arts and sciences to their 500,000 collective alumni.

Princeton left the alliance because of its desire to provide its educational materials to a wider audience, according to Princeton Vice President of Technology Betty Leydon.

“Princeton plans to work on the development of non-proprietary technology tools that will enhance our ability to make an array of online technology tools.... [Our goal] is to make an array of online teaching resources widely available and to deliver academically innovative instruction, not only to our own students, but to a much broader audience that includes our alumni, the higher education community and others interested in the pursuit of knowledge,” Leydon said in a statement released Thursday.

Leydon, who is also Princeton’s Chief Financial Officer, was hired by Princeton last Spring to head up a recently revamped Office of Information Technology.

Princeton’s withdrawal from the alliance did not come as a complete shock. According to Stanford Director of Communications Alan Acosta, Princeton had recently expressed an intention to pursue distance learning on its own.

Accosta also said that although Princeton’s contributions would be missed, he was optimistic about the Alliance’s future.

“With one less partner you’re going to have a little less content, [but] we’re very happy with some of the material that we’ve been producing and that other institutions have been producing,” Accosta said.

“We look at this as something of an experiment,” he said. “There’s a lot of risk in distance learning right now—we’re looking at a lot of models.”

Accosta also noted that one advantage of collaborative distance learning models is their access to a broader collection of content.

Princeton’s decision to pursue a wider distance learning context follows paths forged by MIT and Harvard.

Last week, MIT implemented the next phase of its “OpenCourseWare Initiative,” a $100 million, 10-year distance learning project that aims to make lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments for all of its courses accessible online at no cost to the general public.

Harvard, which turned down an offer to participate in the Alliance’s founding in February 2000, currently supports three distance learning initiatives, each with varying degrees of openness, according to Dean for Research and Technology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Paul C. Martin.

The first, “Harvard at Home,” is a free online, alumni-only website that offers users a chance to explore academic “vignettes” that include video and audio clips of lectures, speeches and interviews with Faculty members.

Users can also access supplementary materials such as texts and historical data.

Second, the Division of Continuing Education offers 32 online courses for credit. Enrollment is open to the general public, but is not free.

For a small fee, registered users can attend on-campus lectures or watch them online. Some courses are available online only.

Finally, Harvard’s course websites are freely accessible to the online public. Outside web surfers sometimes contact Faculty members to pose an academic question or request permission to use course materials.

Martin says that there are currently proposals on the table to make current distance learning initiatives like “Harvard at Home” available to a broader audience.

“We like to think that our alumni would take pride, as do alumni of MIT, in offering glimpses of what an education at Harvard [offers] to others,” Martin said, “but without the interaction that’s essential to a Harvard education and a Harvard degree.”

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.