Larry Johnson has been the CEO of the New Media Consortium (NMC) for nearly a decade, and he has worked in higher education for more than twenty-five years. Before joining NMC, he served in roles that include faculty member, dean, provost, and president. In this interview, he talks about the position of NMC in distance education and the challenges…

Distance education in its many forms had been around for decades, but the Western Governors University (WGU) was arguably the first "virtual university" (VU) in the United States, or at least the first VU that gained widespread attention from the press and public. After the governors in the Western Governors Association announced they would create…

People do not want to know the history, minutiae of policy, or operations, or even the political intrigues of a virtual consortium. People want to know if the consortium has value, whether it can help them, and if it is a threat. In this article, the author focuses on the operating principles and policies that have proven successful in the…

This chapter recounts Oregon community colleges' challenges and successes in developing a statewide distance learning consortium.

Describes the Agricultural Satellite Corporation, a consortium of universities and organizations established to conduct agricultural information and instructional services through advanced telecommunications. Looks at incentives that can motivate faculty to plan and deliver distance education programs. (JOW)

Describes the development and operation of a program which develops and presents training materials to school laboratory technicians through distance education techniques. Coordinated at Canterbury College of Technology, where it originated, the project has become a consortium with four additional members. (MBR)

The Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium (CTDLC) provides its 32 members with Information Technologies (IT) services including a portal Web site, course management software, course hosting and development, faculty training, a help desk, online assessment, and a student financial aid database. These services are supplied to two- and four-year…

The authors discuss the joining of 12 Virginia community colleges from the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia with Radford University to form the Regional Technology Education Consortium (RTEC), a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education program and designed to develop articulation…

Prepared for presentation at the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, in Edinburgh, Scotland, this report describes a proposal, created by the Commonwealth of Learning at the request by the Commonwealth Ministers of Education, to explore the creation of a virtual university to support higher education in small states. A Technical…

This publication is designed to help service providers deliver high-quality workplace development services cost effectively to small and medium-sized businesses. The guide looks at five service delivery strategies: learning consortia, walk-in centers, distance learning, computer-based training, and trained volunteers. These five strategies offer a…

This book contains nine case studies of collaboration in distance education. The case studies focus on such aspects of collaboration in distance education as the following: roles of individual institutional partners; importance of personal relationships; benefits of collaboration to individual partners; conflicts between collaboration and…

The Tri-State Agricultural Distance Delivery Alliance (TADDA) is a new distance education consortium. The three land grant universities in the Pacific Northwest (the University of Idaho, Oregon State University, and Washington State University) developed TADDA in cooperation with Eastern Oregon University and four of the region's community…

This document reports on a telephone survey of higher education planning activities in the western United States that sought information on the development of intrastate electronic consortia for higher education services. A taxonomy of "virtual universities" was developed to make it possible to compare differences and similarities…