Good Teaching is Good Teaching: The Relationship Between Guiding Principles for Distance and General Education

Abstract

The Innovations in Distance Education (IDE) project was launched in 1995 with a grant from the AT&T Foundation. The 3-year ini tiative was designed to help faculty at Penn State, Lincoln, and Cheyney universities create a supportive institutional culture in which the possibilities of distance education could be realized. The project consisted of two principle components, the Faculty Initiative and the Distance Education Policy Symposia. The Fac ulty Initiative's culminating work was the faculty-determined An Emerging Set of Guiding Principles and Practices for the Design and Development of Distance Education (Innovations in Distance Education, 1998).1 Twelve of Penn State's academic colleges and its library system along with Cheyney and Lincoln universities, two of Pennsylvania's Historically Black Institutions, contributed to the Faculty Initia tive. During each year of the 3-year project, funding was awarded to several of the participating academic units. These grants were intended to provide faculty, selected by their administrative heads, with time and resources needed to fully participate in the project. To ground their deliberations regarding issues of instructional de sign and pedagogy in experience, the faculty also were expected to prepare specific courses or noncredit programs for delivery via dis tance education. Faculty funded by the IDE project not only had support staff involved in distance education, but also had access to University resources and an opportunity to implement an individu alized professional development plan, meet regularly with other faculty across academic disciplines, and attend national or interna tional distance education conferences.