Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58065
From the Editors Remote Control A surprising number of people think I live in Tampa, Florida. Or maybe it's not so surprising. My employer, AACSB International, is based in Tampa, and that's where much of my mail goes. People who phone me and don't recognize my 314 area code often ask about the weather down south. The truth is, I'm based in St. Louis, Missouri, almost 900 miles away. But it's even more complicated. The magazine's art direc- tor works out of Washington, D.C., and the printer is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. We all use e-mail, fax, phone, and FedEx to discuss story ideas, share copy, work together on page corrections, and produce this magazine. We're a linked community of professionals working together on a common project, and we rarely get a chance to meet face-to-face. Plenty of today's businesspeople function under similar conditions. They might live in L.A., report to bosses stationed in New York, be paid by a multinational corpora- tion based in Munich, and consult with team members scattered from London to Shanghai. They have to develop good working relationships with people they've never met as they strive to get their products out on time and without defects. Many of today's business students are also learning what it's like to accomplish a project from a remote location, especially when they sign up for classes delivered online. They might join dozens, even hundreds, of other students from around the globe to create communities of learning over the Internet. Students can meet, exchange ideas, work in teams, and learn from their professors without ever setting foot on the b-school quadrangle. Not only does such freedom allow them to pursue degrees unrestricted by geography, but the virtual classroom prepares them for the virtual office where they might spend much of their working lives. Of course, before the first student can enroll in the first online course, distance learning experts emphasize that schools must do some intensive groundwork. To make sure distance programs reflect the same high quality as traditional programs, faculty and administrators must invest time, money, and expertise in developing content and fine-tuning delivery. Sometimes this means training faculty who aren't particularly tech-savvy. Sometimes it means rewriting the curriculum. None of it is easy. But it is essential. As technology evolves and younger students come to class wholly comfortable with all its incarnations, more schools will find themselves pressured to add e-learn- ing components to their curricula. Two articles in this issue explore how they can succeed at that task. In "Going the Distance," Andres Fortino and Paige P. Wolf offer solid suggestions for developing an online program. "The Evolution of E-Learning" focuses on how the digital revolution is transforming the virtual classroom. Both pieces make it clear that remote learning is being offered right now at a university right next door. Turns out dis- tance isn't really so distant any more. ■ z 6 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 BILL BASCOM PAUL KENNEDY