UA Board Backs Technology-Learning Expansion

FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas board of trustees voted Friday to encourage and support its campuses statewide in expanding their online and distance-learning programs, contending this will help the state meet the governor’s long-term goal of increasing the number of college graduates.

Meeting Friday morning at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, the board passed a resolution calling for a comprehensive approach, including cataloging the nontraditional courses they already offer, developing new ones, marketing them effectively and creating new financial models to compensate for a lack of state funds to support any new programs.

UA System President Donald Bobbitt said afterward the expansion will complement traditional classroom programs.

Bobbitt, who just completed his first year as president earlier in the week, said the move toward increasing technology-based learning is one of the focus areas that emerged after the board asked him to investigate a variety ofissues by talking to residents around the state.

“I’ve talked to people in Nashville, Ark.,” Bobbitt said, where employees in manufacturing industries want to finish college degrees to position themselves for promotions without leaving the area to take classes.

“We call them completion degrees,” he said of a trend toward programs that allowpeople who previously attended college to return to school and finish their degrees.

Trustees made clear the participation of each campus would be voluntary, in keeping with their individual missions and goals.

The resolution recognized the need for University of Arkansas schools to support Gov. Mike Beebe’s goal ofdoubling the number of college graduates in the state by 2025.

“And while this is a daunting goal, it is made even more difficult because revenues to support this expansion are not available from traditional state resources, and a significant number of students are unable to access a traditional education because offamily, job and personal circumstances,” the resolution reads.

Bobbitt said he didn’t see how Arkansas could reach the governor’s goal without utilizing online and distance learning.

During the past 15 years, University of Arkansas schools have increasingly turned to distance learning and other technological means to deliver classes “to reach students unable to receive a traditional face-toface campus education,” the board resolution notes.

University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Provost Ray Wallace estimated the campus has about 200 online-only classes and is developing a “lecture-capture” program, estimated to go live in about a year, whereby students interpreting their class notes could replay a portion of a professor’s recorded lectureto clarify their questions.

At Fayetteville’s College of Education and Health Professions, two undergraduate programs and 12 graduate programs are already offered online through the university’s Global Campus, said spokesman Heidi Stambuck.

“Many students have told us they received promotions at their jobs after earningtheir bachelor’s degree,” Stambuck said.

At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, face-to-face classroom experiences continue to be important, “but we do a lot with distance education now,” Chancellor Dan Rahn said.

In UAMS’ College of Health Related Professions, some programs are a hybridin which traditional classes are “enhanced” with remotelearning technologies, he said.

For higher education schools across the state, Rahn said, “I just think that this will be an evolving story.”

The trustees’ full board meeting Friday morning came after a series of committee meetings Thursdayafternoon that concluded with the 4:30 p.m. dedication of the Jean Tyson Child Development Study Center on the Fayetteville campus. The new teaching facility serves 144 children from infancy through preschool, and will provide study and research opportunities for more than 300 students and faculty annually, according to a university release.