Book Review: Partnering in the Learning Marketspace: EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies, Vol. 4, by Ann Hill Duin, Linda L. Baer, and Doreen Starke-Meyerring

Partnering in the Learning Marketspace. EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies, Vol. 4. , by Ann Hill Duin, Linda. L. Baer, and Doreen Starke-Meyerring. (2001). (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 134 pp. , 23. 00) I first read this book shortly after its publication in 2001. I had high interest in the emerging higher education consortia, partnerships, and innovative institutions that had emerged in the late 1990s with the phenomenal emergence and expansion of the Internet. With a goal of reaching out to the new majority—adult students whose employment, community, and family demands prohibited attendance on a college campus—these new collaboratives held the promise of providing high-quality distance instruction in new ways. No longer were institutions placeor region-bound in their audiences: rural populations, inner-city adults, and suburban professionals could all gain access, and the prosperity of that era gave rise to institutional experimentation. New configurations allowed innovative degree programs with general education being offered by one institution (like SUNY New Paltz) the major from another (like SUNY Empire State College) with the entire operation overseen by a larger administrative entity (like the SUNY Learning Network). Students used a single portal to apply for admission, get essential student services, access a uniform Web platform for all instruction, and view academic records in as transparent a manner as possible. Our model at Western Governors University, a newly-formed higher education institution, fell right in line with the dynamics these authors discuss. Using a competency-based approach for distance education makes possible use of instruction from dozens of different education providers to meet students’ individual needs. Whereas much of the distance education discourse dwells upon the individual course—its design, faculty to student and peer interaction—a strength of this book is its confrontation with macro issues. It examines how groups of higher education institutions can band together to provide a higher-quality educational product for the adult student consumer that is better than any of them could offer by themselves. There are approximately 70 million adults in the U. S. who lack a postsecondary education, and 75 percent of Americans 25 years and older do not have a bachelor’s degree (The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 13, 2003; p. A31). The “marketspace” replaces the parochial marketplace, electronic education becoming a global enterprise. Beyond course dynamics, the authors examine what administrative systems, technology tools, sociopolitical circumstances, and collaborative connections must be in place for distance education success at the programmatic and institutional level. They write to an audience of higher education officials and corporate executives who will implement distance initiatives; the book is also for distance educators with keen interest in planning and policy. A key point that resonates throughout the book is the reciprocal nature of partnerships. All participants—the institutions, the programs, the faculty, and (not least) the students—must benefit from the association. Rewards from the collaborative must be spread equitably among players. Partners may have different motives, as in the case of a college or university taking a specialized degree program into a specific employer’s workplace (often dispersed across continents). However, a symbiosis must occur, in which the postsecondary institution gains new students and tuition revenues while the industry gains qualified workers with greater mobility and morale. Not only are the authors experienced distance educators in their own right, who candidly share the successes and failures of the e-partnerships with which they have been involved, but they also have brought together senior distance education scholars and administrators to share their perspectives on what works or does not. These academics represent institutions in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdon, who have been part of a massive outreach over the past several decades to open up educational access to the increasingly numerous adult student. The monograph is short but full of useful material. It begins by outlining the benefits of collaborative relations in the new landscape of higher education created by the Internet and presents a typology with examples of different sorts of partnerships. This grid contrasts institutions that are private, for-profit postsecondary enterprises with public higher education institutions. Another dimension of the grid deals with those whose outreach is to a target niche of select learners versus those with a general orientation. Following this introduction, the focus shifts to the analysis of portals for higher education that have evolved over the past decade. Moving beyond the “user-centered” home page or commercial “owner-centered” Website are the new academic portals that promote efficiency of all student services and access to instructional opportunities. The ideal e-learning marketspace portal provides consistent learning services from a variety of institutions to the learner in one place and fosters long-term relationships among students and their mentors for lifelong learning; they engender continuous commitment, collaboration, and engagement. The “disruptive technology” of the Internet, in which millions of stray Websites proliferated during the “homesteading” era, has shrunk to a much smaller number of sites that people actually frequent – those that aggregate many useful services into one place. We are now in the era of “community building, ” as successful institutional partners establish meaningful relations with their students. The authors posit that institutions need to establish five priorities that move beyond goals like competitiveness, scalability, and access. Through collaboration, new organizations can provide better services to students, whose continued support is essential. These priorities are: Duin, Baer, and Starke-Meyerring found readiness, tools, and leadership to be the essential ingredients for effective e-learning partnerships. They address each of these in the final chapters of their book. The organization is ready to partner when its leaders are committed, it exhibits an allegiance to student-centered education, there is an organizational climate that supports change, and its faculty buy in (because faculty will be those who primarily carry the venture). E-learning marketspace tools are created to empower citizens to take primary responsibility for information and learning upon themselves. These include: information and access tools (such as Web sites, virtual libraries, and consortia like MERLOT) ; streamlined and shared services tools (such as credit transfer, registration, admissions, and student records) ; and relationship tools. Relationship tools are most critical but least developed and promulgated; they include e-portfolios to document learning and competency development; e-mentoring to guide the learner to fulfillment of his or her goals through preassessment, instruction, and outcome assessment; and e-learning communities to allow faculty and students alike to share their expertise. Finally, Such competent leaders exert entrepreneurial skills that often challenge the codes of age-old higher education; they participate fully in using technology, and work on multiple partnerships simultaneously. Authentic leaders value and exhibit the interpersonal skills associated with emotional intelligence while exerting a transformational leadership style that elevates subordinates by responding to their needs and desires. Such authenticity communicates a grander vision for the partnership of greater social good, service to students, and a larger regional, national and/or global extension of the organization’s influence. These leaders recognize and deal effectively with polarities such as that between “disruptive” technologies and stability; public versus private; higher education versus business and industry; institutional versus individual learner needs, competition versus collaboration; technology versus relationships; intellectual versus social capital, and global versus parochial ends. As mentioned, interspersed throughout the book chapters, experts such as Canadian Open Learning Agency’s Glen Farrel and Jaap Tuinman, provide “Perspective” pieces. So do Sir John Daniel and Robin Mason of the Open University of the United Kingdom, Murray Turoff at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Diana Oblinger, senior fellow at EDUCAUSE. Although these “Perspective” pieces are a mere three to four pages each, each expert’s view is quite different. Jaap states that today’s e-learning revolution demands that “every known educational concept is open to reanalysis; this includes the very notion of education, as well as the more trivial need to tear apart and redefine such matters as courses, credits, skills, classes, degrees and so forth” (p. 32). Farrell finds the biggest obstacles to be: threats of new e-learning ways of shaping and controlling curriculum; concerns that partnerships will impinge on an institution’s autonomy; and an organization’s inability to reallocate resources to fund innovation, often leaving it to operate on the fringe. In contrast, Daniel and Mason find the largest obstacle to be the negotiation of ways to operationalize a partnership, as each party has its own way of doing business. The most successful partnerships have been complementary ones, where each partner brings something to the relationship desired by, but lacking, in the other partners. Turoff fears that the profit motive will advance the huge lecture-type expert presentation; whereas effective Internet-based education requires dedicated interaction with small groups of students by qualified, regular faculty. Oblinger claims that partners must share the burden of risk-taking and persist in their relationship over the long term, as partnerships “take time to develop, mature, and yield long-term benefits” (p. 109). The key to this comes from leadership involving vision and commitment, as “management deals mostly with the status quo; leadership deals mostly with change” (p. 109). The book has its limitations. First, although it has a global outlook, all examples and contributors are from English-speaking developed countries. What are the implications of this technology for less developed countries and their adoption of education technology, especially distance education as the Internet advances into those nations? The book examines partnerships in higher education with some examples of their incursion into the educational processes of select business and industrial markets. Where are examples from sectors such as the military, health, medicine, government, and human services, where the needs for continual professional development are acute and distance education is making important inroads? Although the authors claim in several places that no one institution can dominate a partnership, they seem unable to recognize that some entity must take charge or the innovation will not work. Does not some administrative body need to keep the enterprise on track, make executive decisions, avoid pitfalls, ensure that revenues and benefits are achieve and fairly distributed? The book was written during the optimism of prosperity, before the tragedies of September 11th and the downturn of the economy. The economic slump has pushed many e-partnering enterprises out of business as institutions revert to their “tried and true” patterns of the past and find little capital and energy for collaborative innovation. Recent closures include Fathom, NYU Online, Harcourt University, California Virtual University, and the US Open University. Yet, in this milieu there is much success by single institutions with extensive distance operations (e. g. , the University of Phoenix, with over 60, 000 online students, and the University of Maryland University College, with over 87, 000 distance enrollments). Their name recognition, accreditation, overlap with site-based students, and decades of campus-based presence may partially explain their success. However, are the partnership ventures thriving, or are they facing the same budget cuts and institutional constraints of their contributing partners? Some notable examples of success are the SUNY Learning Network with an estimated 60, 000 course enrollments, and eArmyU with over 30, 000 online students. Rereading the book now, during this period of economic turmoil, further underscores the need for viable e-learning partnerships in the global marketspace. If you are currently involved in such an endeavor or considering undertaking one, this book is for you. “How to’s, ” challenges, pitfalls, and rewards—it is all there.