The Distance Education Market Place

1
The Distance Education Market Place

• Prof. Ellis Horowitz
• horowitz_at_usc.edu
• November 15, 2000

2
Outline

• Distance Education Industry
• Academia
• Private Industry
• The USC School of Engineering formula
• Academic courses
• Professional development courses
• Looking into the Future

3
So Who is Really Doing It?

• www.r1edu.org
• 30 Research I universities as denoted by the
  Carnegie Foundation
• and many, many
• others

4
The Competition in Engineering -Stanford Online
250 courses/yr to 200 corporate sites Primarily
grad-level EE CS courses Also offer 1 day 1
week seminars
5
What Courses are Being Delivered? Some Examples

• For credit courses, e.g. Columbia, U. Illinois,
  Stanford and USC all offer fully online MS
  degrees in EE and CS
• Non-credit/certificate programs in many areas,
  (including CS) are available from university
  extension centers, e.g. UCLA, NYU, U. Wash, etc.
• Other popular distance education programs include
  business (MBA) and Medicine/Health Care

6
What is Driving Online Learning?

• DEMAND
• Rapid obsolescence of
• knowledge and training
• Need/desire for just-in-time
• delivery
• Need for cost effective
• ways to train a globally
• distributed workforce
• Demand for flexible access
• to lifelong learning

• THE CATALYST
• Internet access at home
• and at work
• Advances in computer
• technology support
• multimedia rich content
• Increasing bandwidth
• Growing list of quality
• E-learning products
• Emerging technology
• standards

7
Can Distance Education be Profitable?

• for I (NYU, U. Maryland, Cornell, Columbia,
  Temple, etc. ) do
• trustees at I agree to create a For-Profit
  Subsidiary to Market Distance Education Courses
• Faculty are concerned
• Provost agrees to work out details with the
  faculty

8
Computer Training is a Billion Dollar Industry

• Estimates indicate that several hundred thousand
  computer professionals took at least one IT
  training course last year
• Name URL Yr sales
• Learning Tree http//www.learningtree.com 150
  mil
• CBT Group http//www.cbtsys.com 150 mil
• Computer Learning Centershttp//www.clcx.com 112
  mil
• New Horizons Worldwidehttp//www.newhorizons.com 6
  0 mil
• Strayer Education http//www.strayer.edu 58 mil
• Wave Technologies http//www.wavetech.com 36 mil

9
USC School of Engineering Distance Ed Network -
History

• Established in 1972 by the School of Engineering
• Offering a one-way video, two-way audio
  broadcasting system based upon microwave
  technology
• More than 20 Southern Calif. companies subscribe,
  e.g. TRW, Hughes, Aerospace, JPL, etc.

10
Other Delivery Systems

• Leased T1 lines connect USC with Raytheon in
  Tucson and NASA in Ames (CA)
• PanAm Satellite gives us broadcast potential
  across the U.S.
• Some current sites
• Boeing in Wichita, St. Louis
• CATE in Thousand Oaks
• Ericsson in San Diego
• Motorola in Tempe
• OralscanLabs Suffern (NY)
• Qualcomm Boulder, San Diego
• TRW in Sunnyvale
• UMR in Rolla (MO)

11
Webcasting The Latest Delivery Mechanism

• Lectures are captured either live or on videotape
  and converted to digital form
• Files are transformed into a streaming format for
  delivery at multiple connection speeds,e.g.
  Microsoft Media Player or Real Networks
• Instructor notes/displays etc. are extracted and
  transformed into a slide show that can be seen in
  a web browser
• Resulting files are placed on a course web page
  where a video server can deliver them when
  requested

12
View of the WebCasting Desktop
13
Fine Tuning Internet Delivery

• Add chat rooms and threaded newsgroups
• Build online communities
• Have help desks and support for advising,
  registration, homework submission and proctoring
  of exams
• Use interactivity
• Systems exist for developing interactive
  exercises, e.g. Mallard from Univ. of Illinois
• High risk - high return activity

14
Our Business Model - Corporate Subscribers

• Aerojet - Azusa
• Aerospace - El Segundo
• Boeing - Seal Beach, Canoga Park, Anaheim, Long
  Beach, Downey
• Dept. of Water Power, L.A.
• Ericsson - San Diego
• Hughes Space Comm. - El Segundo
• ITT/Gilfillan - Van Nuys
• JPL - Pasadena

• Lockheed - Sunnyvale, Palmdale
• Motorola - Tempe, AZ
• NASA-Ames - Moffet Field
• Odetics - Anaheim
• Qualcomm - San Diego Boulder, CO
• Raytheon - Tucson, AZ El Segundo Torrance
  Fullerton
• TRW - El Segundo, Sunnyvale
• Volt Delta Resources - Orange
• Xerox - El Segundo

15
Enrollment in DEN Courses
Breakeven point
16
Our Curriculum

• M.S. degrees in
• Aerospace Engineering
• Computer Science (with specializations in
  Networks, Multimedia, Software Engineering)
• Computer Engineering
• Electrical Engineering (with specializations in
  Aerospace Controls, Networks, Multimedia, VLSI
  Design)
• Systems Architecture
• Computer-Aided Engineering (Masters of
  Engineering)

17
Quality of Webcasting

• Students value
• Not having to drive to campus to attend a class
  (telecommuting)
• Being able to view the lecture when they want to
  (asynchronous learning)
• Students have trouble with
• Slow speed of the Internet
• Students appear unconcerned about
• An inability to see other students in the class
• An inability to communicate directly with the
  instructor

18
Customer Service is Critical - den.usc.edu
19
Online Learning Portals

• Western Governors University (now defunct)
• California Virtual University (now defunct)
• Southern Regional Education Boards Electronic
  Campus (SREB)
• www.hungryminds.com (defunct)
• www.mindedge.com
• www.embark.com
• www.unext.com
• www.Click2learn.com

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A Distance Education Planning Sheet (1) - Market
Research

• What content
• Choose high demand disciplines
• decide whether to offer credit/non-credit
• make sure the program is consistent with your
  institutions mission.
• To whom
• identify the students you hope to reach
• Decide how much you can charge

21
A Distance Education Planning Sheet (2) - Faculty
Issues

• Identify the best content developers
• Full-time/part-time
• Design a faculty incentive scheme
• Address IP concerns, e.g.
• Does a professor own his own lecture?
• Can a professor sell his lectures to other
  universities?
• Can professors display someone elses textbook
  page on the web?
• Your univ. may own your web site, but who owns
  the content that you place there?

22
A Distance Education Planning Sheet (3) -
Administrative Support

• Marketing staff
• Trips to corporate sponsors, portals
• technical staff
• Running a combined computer facility and
  television studio
• administrative staff must provide information to
  students on
• Admission, advisement, registration, payments,
  homework, exams

23
A Distance Education Planning Sheet (4) -
Infrastructure

• Studio classrooms
• Audio capture
• Video capture
• Encoding for live/delayed Internet webcast
• Webcasting computing facility
• Create or select uniform course development
  system with common look and feel