Harvard Ponders Distance Learning

Over the last four years, a new generation of Harvard students has emerged—those who earn course credit while never stepping foot on campus.

Harvard’s foray into distance learning, which began in the fall of 1997 with one course taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Extension School, has grown to a collection of dozens of online courses offered at a majority of the University’s 11 schools.

But before such growth leads to students earning degrees through online course work, University President Lawrence H. Summers will establish a committee of professors to consider if the meaning of a Harvard degree depends on physical presence in Harvard’s classrooms.

Existing University policy mandates that in order to receive a degree at Harvard, students must spend at least one full academic year studying on campus. But this policy had received little attention before Summers’ arrival on campus.

“There are some [distance learning] programs in parts of the University that push the limits or go beyond the limits of those statutes,” Summers says. He declines, however, to name the specific programs in violation.

He says the new committee—to be named in the coming weeks—will discuss this residency requirement and its appropriateness with the advent of distance education.

“The question has arisen as lifestyles change and it becomes more difficult for mid-career professionals to come to the University for part of their career,” he says.

Provost Steven E. Hyman—whose office will oversee the committee—says the investigations will extend beyond the boundaries of distance learning.

“The mission of this committee is to understand what we’re going to require for any type of Harvard degree,” he says. “We don’t want to undercut the meaning of a Harvard degree.”

Earning an Exemption

Despite Summers’ decision to look at the residency rule, at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) a degree-granting distance learning program has been given an administrative green light to continue even though its students do not spend a year on campus.

Nancy M. Kane, who directs the HSPH Master of Science Program in Health Care Management, explains that her students’ continued involvement in their careers as doctors makes it impossible to come to Harvard for an entire year.

Instead, over a period of two years, students come for three full weeks in the summer and five four-day weekends during the academic year, in addition to online course work.

“They need management skills, but they can’t drop their jobs and come to school,” Kane says.

When word of the HSPH program reached Mass. Hall, Summers met the school’s administrators, and Kane herself met with Hyman, she says.

“We’re sort of being given special exemption at the moment while the University considers how to deal with that requirement,” Kane explains.

Kane says the exemption was justified since students enrolled in the HSPH program must already have a doctorate degree, unlike other distance learning programs at Harvard.

“They’ve already been on campus,” she says. “This is their third degree.”

But Kane maintains that it is important to look at the residency requirement’s application to distance learning.

“I think they have legitimate concerns and I do, too,” Kane says. “I can see how this [granting of degrees without meeting the residency requirement] could get really out of hand.”

Where Harvard Stands

Despite Harvard’s widespread ventures into distance learning, the University has been cautious in its approach.

Harvard declined the invitation to join a distance learning alliance between Yale, Princeton and Stanford in February 2000. Princeton has since pulled out of the partnership.

At the time Harvard administrators worried that a hasty, large-scale initiative could take professors away from crucial time in the classroom.

And while the decision was made before Summers became president, he stands by it.

“The University’s decision not to rush headlong into [the alliance] several years ago has been very much vindicated by the difficulties that a number of much ballyhooed ventures introduced by other universities have run into,” he says.

Likewise, Harvard made no efforts to follow MIT’s announcement last April of an initiative to make lecture notes, course outlines, reading lists and assignments for all of its courses accessible online at no cost through the OpenCourseWare Project.

Instead, Harvard seems to be charting is own course in developing online educational approaches.

Over the last year, experimentation in distance learning has emerged across the University’s faculties, from the Harvard Business School (HBS) Interactive to the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

At the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) several initiatives are trying to tap into the distance learning niche.

The E-Government Executive Education (3E) Project, for example, combines forces with HBS to provide executive education to government officials.

But the program’s focus is not limited to cyberspace. Face-to-face instruction is critical component of the program according to one of its leaders.

Jerry E. Mechling ’65, co-director of the 3E project, says the program’s distance learning component is intended “to warm people up” to the basics of a topic before they arrive on campus.

Mechling says that though his program was not affected by Summers’ new look at residency requirements, other KSG programs have had to make changes in the wake of the recent scrutiny.

A Complicated Endeavor

As Harvard’s schools explore distance learning options, they are discovering that it is more complicated than many people thought it would be at the beginning of the distance learning revolution.

“The bigger question isn’t really the distance learning,” Kane explains. “It’s how do you provide skills and education that adults need.”

And other directors of distance learning programs note technology cannot be a replacement for a student’s interaction with both their peers and professors.

“A lot of people have made the mistake of thinking that online learning is a substitute for faculty,” says Herman B. “Dutch” Leonard ’74, who is part of a working group investigating the potential of distance learning at KSG.

While Leonard praises MIT’s recent efforts to make course materials available online, he points out that true distance learning requires a teacher to serve as a facilitator between students and course content.

“[Developing distance learning programs] is going to force us to be more careful and conscious about what we think is special, to actively question what works best,” he says.

And despite Summers’ decision to take a closer look at future direction of distance learning, he still describes it as an element of the University’s desire to be on the “cutting edge” of education.

“Just what is the next strategic direction, I don’t know,” he says. “I think all of us in higher education are groping and finding our way.”

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.