What is distance learning? A simple definition of distance learning is any form of teaching and learning where student and teacher are not in the same place at the same time. Distance has, in the past two years, become a very hot topic among higher education institutions. Technology has advanced enough that it is now feasible to offer college courses and/or degrees to students who are not physically at the university. So far, most distance learning has taken place at the graduate level, but the trend is moving toward undergraduate education. Starting this year, WPI is offering an experimental undergraduate degree program to employees of United Technologies Corporation (UTC). The program offers older adults the ability to get a college education without quitting their jobs and uprooting their families.
Because of UTC's renewed dedication to the education of their employees, the director of training and Education for UTC contacted Rick Sisson in the Manufacturing Engineering department about the feasibility of offering a full undergraduate degree from WPI to some of their employees. These prospective students had, through their dedication and competence, risen to engineer positions in their respective companies without having an engineering degree, and the company wanted these employees to receive an engineering degree. Rick Sisson first suggested a certificate program, but UTC wanted the same undergraduate program that on-campus students take. It was imperative that the degree that would be received would be offered by WPI faculty, and have the same structure and format that the class was taught with on campus. It was finally decided that WPI would offer an experimental degree program via use of various technologies the most prominent on being PictureTel (video conferencing). Over the summer of 1996, WPI offered some courses to provide the students a chance to get ready for fall classes and to see what was expected of them as WPI undergraduates.
The ADLN Manufacturing Engineering program officially started A-term 1996. A total of six separate sites, five UTC sites and one Torrington location, are participating in the program. Tuition is paid by the company on a per class basis (approximately $1500 per class). The program is structured to offer two classes per term for all five terms over a five year period. The classes are offered two nights a week (Monday and Thursday) for two hours per class. Because of the relatively small number of students enrolled, the course curriculum is set with the A-term classes Calculus I and Introduction to the History of Technology and the B-term classes Physics I and Introductory Microeconomics. Many of the students have transfer credits, and have not had to take all of the classes offered to date. One thing that has become clear to the directors of this program is that two classes per term on top of a forty hour work week and a family is too much for most people, but the students seem very dedicated to getting a manufacturing degree from WPI.
The WPI ADLN program did not start with this UTC program, in fact the program has been in effect at the graduate level for almost two decades. WPI started offering graduate courses in 1979 when select industries contacted WPI to offer video taped courses in Management. In 1993, the Fire Protection Engineering program started to offer courses to distance sites. In the same year, WPI also invested in the video conferencing technology of PictureTel. In 1994, WPI and the University of Maine at Orono offered a joint graduate class where there were students from both universities taking the class simultaneously. This program ran for four semesters with the WPI and UMaine trading off who would actually teach the class. Also in 1994 the ADLN program started to offer continuing education classes. The MFE program that started in 1996 is the first time that ADLN has been used at an undergraduate level at WPI, but there is a lot of previous experience at the graduate level. WPI is not, by any means, the only college or university to offer course, or even degree programs, by distance learning. A new publication by Petersons, the leading authority on college education, Peterson's Guide to Distance Learning lists over 750 universities that offer distance learning. Distance learning is becoming an important part of higher education and WPI with their ADLN program is participating as much as they can while still offering the high quality WPI education.