1-2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 11-12 13-14 15-16 17-18

application of telecommunications technologies to the goals and purposes of higher education in the Greater New Orleans area. (Delgado Community College, Dillard University, Loyola University, Nunez Community College, Southern University at New Orleans, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, Xavier University, and the WLAE-Channel32 Educational Communications Foundation.) NOETC programs offer college-credit telecourses and varietal higher education programming produced by it member institutions and special programming delivered to New Orleans via satellite. The efforts of NOETC have made ground breaking success in helping the University of New Orleans a forerunner in distance learning.
If we look at the University of New Orleans study we must still address many of the issues that are often overlooked. As one instructor put it,I was having a bad technology day, the power went out an lost connection with a guest speaker. However, pressing issues currently being addressed are registration and transfer, student fees and cost, campus coordination and technical staff, faculty interest and cooperation, work and teaching load, course equivalency issues, faculty training, faculty support services, faculty reward systems, property rights/ownership, copyright issues and the proctoring of student exams at remote sites (Drichta 1997). Support provided by higher education agencies and private sectors can tackle these issues
Through the efforts of the La. State Board of Regents, LaSERnet II (LaNET-a statewide higher education network growing out of LOUIS, the Louisiana On-Line University System) the Office of Telecommunications managementhave positioned Louisiana to mover forward aggressively. The Board of Regents with assistance from OTM proposes placing a distance learning classroom on each of its campuses. This will be mirrored from the existing LaNet that connects LSUBR, UNO, LSU-A, LSU-E, and LSU-S. The This current project currently in developmentLaSERnet IIis estimated to cost 11.7M.
As the new push towards technology in education becomes more mainstream a number of new issues will arise, especially in curriculum development and course development, instructor/teacher practices and student acceptance.
We touched on only some of the issues that need to be addressed as this new learning style or mode carries over into the 21st Century. Its also important to

Page 13


realize that no institution alone could tackle all of these issues. Fortunately for the University of New Orleans, it is a partner with many of the institutions listed above and is sharing cost and curriculum changes. The University of New Orleans and public business has also redefined the nature of distance learning. The recent addition on several non-credited training based courses now accounts for much of the day time scheduling. So as Distance Learning grows and evolves so will the curriculum, courses offerings and instructor philosophies, beliefs and learning practices. As Dr. Malcolm Knowles stated; "...the practitioners have lagged far behind the curriculum theorists in helping students learn how to learn rather than just teaching them what they "ought" to know" (Knowles, 1980).

Page 14