So what's my vision for Dawson's School of Online Learning?
As 2009 wrapped up and 2010 begins to crank into high gear, I've spent a fair amount of time writing speculative and reflective posts. Then I stumbled across a local job posting for the Chief Technology Officer for UMassOnline, the distance education division of the University of Massachusetts. It reminded me of another post I'd written this year, asking if a degree from an online university could be "good enough" to compete with one from a physical school.
The job posting itself stated that
The successful candidate will be willing to help create the future, articulate a compelling vision, and attract an extended network of colleagues, peers, and resources to make it happen.
Well that sounds like a cool job, huh? The part that resonated most with me, however, was articulating a compelling vision for an online school. When I wrote about "Dawson's School of Online Learning" last year, I concluded that
I’d be proud to put that DSOL Dad sticker on the back of my Volvo. The point should really be what my kids get out of higher education, not where they get their higher education.
I still very much believe that; the UMassOnline posting, though, prompted me to take this DSOL thought exercise a bit further. What would my vision be for this fictitious, entirely online school? In many ways, it wouldn't be that far from a vision for UMassOnline or any other distance education division within a traditional university. Try this on for a vision statement:
Dawson's School of Online Learning will be a respected destination for higher education, providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate study for students who seek out the vast resources that its online nature enables. School guidance counselors, employers, and graduate schools will afford the same consideration to DSOL as they do to the best of the brick and mortar universities.
What do you think? It's a stretch, certainly, but it is a vision, after all. It's also a new decade in a relatively new century in a very new millennium. I'm inclined to believe that Internet access is not only ubiquitous enough, but flattening and transformational enough that online education will become the dominant form of learning in the years to come.