Barriers To Online Teaching In Post-Secondary Institutions: Can Policy Changes Fix It?

Recent technological advances have increased the overall amount of information available and improved accessibility to that information, while at the same time the costs of publishing information have decreased. These general shifts throughout society are true in education and have caused students to be more demanding and more knowledgeable about alternatives for their education. Combined with demographic trends, political forces, economic factors, the need for lifelong learning, and the changing emphases in teaching and learning, there is a resurgence of interest in distance education both at traditional institutions of higher education and in organizations whose sole mission is distance education (Dede, 1990; Knott, 1992; Lewis and Romiszowski, 1996). Can higher education at "traditional" universities change to meet the new student demands and the intense competition among education providers that distance education brings? The use of computer-mediated communication in distance learning to create online classrooms has become a popular means of distance learning, both in mixed mode with face-to-face instruction or as a sole channel of education at a distance. By online teaching or online instruction for the purposes of this article, I mean those activities limited to primary delivery by computer-mediated online instruction, as opposed to delivery systems such as audio or video/TV. Additionally, I am referring to instruction in which the course interaction is conducted completely online, or significantly online (i.e., where, at the minimum,. 50% of the graded part of the course is online).