Peter S. Cookson,
Associate Vice-President, Research and Institutional Studies
Athabasca University – Canada’s Open University

The purpose of this document is to outline a systems framework to guide researchers who wish to report on experiences relating to adoption of distance education technologies. In this paper, the term systems approach refers to a series of defined steps, drawn from systems theory, researchers may take to describe and analyze the circumstances surrounding the introduction of distance education interventions in their institutions. Although the process may be manifest very differently in different institutions, the systems approach provides a common framework for discussion and analysis of similarities and dissimilarities as well as identification of common themes. Indeed, a common framework may enable added value in the form of mid-range theories that offer practical insights to administrators and institutions similarly involved with introducing distance education interventions.

This framework focuses on the circumstances that arise when efforts are made within an institution to design, develop, deliver, and/or evaluate applications of distance education technologies. The "map" depicted in Figure 1 comprises both extra-institutional environmental influences emanating from the society in which the institution is located and the defined institutional environment of the institution. Factors that influence the institutional internal environment, defined in Table 1, converge to form within the institutional environment demands for institutional management, quality, cost containment, effectiveness, intra- and inter-institutional collaboration, resource development and reallocation, efficiency, access, growth, efficiency, and restructuring. These demands, in turn, exert pressure upon the three organizational features (defined in Table 2) the give the institution its unique identity: structures, cultures, and processes (Cuban, 1999).

The impact of particular interventions may affect the institution at three levels: (1) the institutional level (strategic planning, institutional management, reorganization and labour relations, rewards, costs, quality control, intra- and interinstitutional collaboration, and resource development); (2) course development management systems; and (3) course delivery management systems. Organizational operations at each of these levels may be discussed in terms of how they relate to the unique structures, culture, and processes of the institution. These interrelationships are shown in Figure 2.

Outline for Description and Analysis of Distance Education Interventions

The major components corresponding to the main headings to appear in descriptive studies of distance education interventions are displayed in Figure 3. An outline for reporting descriptive and analytical studies may be organized as follows:

1. Introduction
   1. Brief description of the institution
   2. Overview of the efforts made to convert educational programs delivered via non-online modes to online modes.

3. Brief mention of the kinds of problems and/or issues encountered (to be explained subsequently in the article).
4. Allusion to how the institution's approach to resolving the problems and/or issues (also to be explained subsequently in the article).
5. Overview of how the study is organized.

2. How are the structure, culture and processes (see Table 1) unique to your institution?
3. What are the extra-institutional (societal) context or environmental factors (see Table 2) that have had the greatest influence on your institution?
4. What have been the most influential institutional environmental demands on your institution (see Table 3)?
5. What has been the sequence of events ("critical incidents") in connection with conversion to delivery online instructional programs?
6. What have been the intended and unintended consequences of the distance education intervention efforts for
   1. the learning/teaching system (including students)?
   2. institutional level operational systems?
   3. course development management system?
   4. course delivery system?
7. What have been the implications of this experience for:
1. your institution in general?
2. the administration?
3. the academics in your institution?
4. learners?
5. other institutions planning to convert traditional forms of distance education programs to online distance education modalities?
8. Conclusions

In this paper I have presented a framework, based on systems thinking, that can serve as a guide for reporting on distance education interventions in higher education institutional settings. Drawing on this systems framework, studies that would be otherwise limited to the particulars of specific institutional settings can be more relevant to readers in different institutional settings. Lessons can thus be more readily shared with fellow distance educators, general findings can be more readily identified, and thus more meaningful contributions to the store of knowledge associated with the field of distance education can be made.

Table 1. Essential features of an educational institution (¹)

Structures: Organizational features that give an educational institution its own identity.

• multiple goals (research, teaching, service)
• public and private funding to support multiple institutional functions, including nonacademic activities
• admissions policies
• decentralized departmental organization for allocation of institutional functions and professorial resources
• policies for determining hiring, tenure, and promotion
• curricular and instructional policies based upon the elective principle, I
• division of labor between administrators and faculty in governing nonacademic and academic matters

Cultures: overall stories, beliefs, language, rituals, and practices that give meaning to those in the institution:

• Professorial beliefs in, and norms of, academic freedom and autonomy in research and teaching
• shared faculty beliefs about what portions of the institution's mission are more important than others
• subcultures of departments and schools anchored in a discipline and their history within the institution

Processes: formal and informal conduits of

• communication and of allocating resources
• legislative and judicial procedures
• intra- and interdepartmental bargaining
• actual teaching and advising practices

(¹) Larry Cuban, How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999, p. 63.

Geography: Climate, weather, characteristics of the terrain, and physical location and distribution of natural resources and population centers.

Economic: extent to which the basis of the economy is natural resources, industrial production, or services; level of production; degree of dependence upon export and importation of goods and services; access of the population to health care; distribution of adequate family income; distribution of adequate housing; rate of employment, unemployment, or underemployment; solvency and financial efficiency of different levels of government; extent of abject poverty, as opposed to basic minima of access to sufficient resources to maintain a modest quality of life; efficiency and equity of the tax system; rate of creation of small business.

Demographics: size, density, fecundity, ethnicity, age profile, level of literacy, level of type of prior schooling experience, level of family income, and health.

Technology: quantity and quality of communications technologies infrastructures (quantity, quality, and distribution of dependable telephone services, dependable postal services, quantity, quality, and distribution of adequate transportation systems; distribution of computers; distribution of access to organizational, national, and international computer networks; access to fax machines; and the nature, extent, and pacing of adoption of communication technologies in government, education, and industry organizations.

Social Relations: nature of employer-employee relations; degree of security of people and property; degree of harmony between various institutions of society, stability, integrity and health of the family as the fundamental unit and most important institution of socialization within society; extent of abject poverty; extent to which certain groups are exploited.

Culture: level of literacy and schooling of the population; availability, distributions and educational applications of mass communications and popular education; degree of consensus and compliance with moral and legal codes; quantity, quality and distribution of discretionary time; quantity and quality of contacts with other cultures; affordability, quality, and distribution of access to schooling at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Competition: nature and extent multiple providers offer to consumers similar goods and servers operate within the society, as opposed to providers of goods and servers operate as monopolies.

Historical: all of the above dimensions, including present trends.

Institutional level systems: Strategic planning, institutional management, reorganization and labour relations, rewards, costs, quality control, intra-and interinstitutional collaboration, and resource development

Course development management system: Structures, processes, and cultures activated in connection with planning, design, development, and production of courses that encompass given programs.

Course delivery management system: Structures, processes and cultures activated in connection with the delivery of the courses that comprise given programs.