Defining Nontraditional Education

Ross Woods

Nontraditional education, as it once was, had three main educational characteristics:

1. Students do not study full-time on campus, although some might spend some time there. So far, almost all have studied part-time.
2. Students get most of their cognitive input from self-study materials, of which many kinds are available.
3. Students meet regularly with the teacher, whose role varies considerably according to the kind of school. Students regularly attend seminars, tutorials or short periods on campus, or meet personally with a tutor. Class time, however, is not for imparting information but for evaluation, clarification, support, and reflection.

Each of these contains core values. In the first, the student for some reason cannot or should not study on campus, because either he has local commitments or it is preferable for him to study in extension. The second is a natural consequence; the student must become more independent in his study habits. The third emphasises that the teacher still has an important role to play. In some forms of learning, interaction with other students is also essential.

The difference between campus and extension study is indistinct, and a watertight definition of extension education is not really possible. In some schools, campus and extensions programs are clearly separate and sharply contrastive. Mostly, however, many shades of gray lie between the two types. The most campus-based concept of study is that the student lives on campus, studies full time, earns all his degree by learning through lectures, and depends completely on campus facilities. The idea is very attractive. Campus programs are highly tangible; a visitor can go there, see a name written up outside, expensive buildings, a library, students studying, dormitories, and staff. Staff and students can spend all their time teaching and studying on campus with few distractions, and they can develop real school loyalty

In reality, however, "campus" and "extension" are almost caricatures as much as real types. (Cf. Bender, 1983:285) A great deal of unrealistic idealism has been attached to community life on campus; campuses range from emotional pressure cans to impersonal knowledge factories where students only show up to attend obligatory activities. In the U.S., the majority of undergraduates is over twenty-one years old, almost half are part-time, and one in three freshmen does not come directly from high school. (Lynton, 1986:29) Finding even one pure example of a "campus" type is exceedingly difficult; schools easily adopt various elements of what in North America would be termed extension or nontraditionality. Many students live at home and commute to campus, perhaps spending more study time at home than actually on campus. They likely have the option to earn at least part of their degree through assessment. A student might study part-time through the year, or only for special short terms. He might study at a satellite campus, or even at facilities rented for a short term. He might be responsible to his campus teachers but spend time away from campus in practicum or field research. He might use self-teaching materials and electronic communications while on campus, and he might use libraries and facilities from other institutions.

In the same way, correspondence education can adopt some elements of extension and campus education. A student might be encouraged to meet together with other students in classes, and his "self-teaching" materials might not work well unless he does so. Alternatively, he might be advised to link up with an accredited assessment school or be required to do part of the degree on campus.

In the end, to say that campus and extension delivery systems are intrinsically different is really an oversimplification; almost any single descriptor of extension education can be valid for campus education. It seems more accurate to say that delivery systems only tend to be different. Even geographical place of learning is not a clear descriptor; how big or permanent does a tutorial center or a satellite campus have to become before it is a small campus? Besides, simply being on campus hardly reflects the value of what is learned anyway. If "extension" delivery systems work at all, they can work just as well on "campus". The difference is one of degree, not of nature.

Nontraditionality and Innovation

A great deal of the nontraditional education literature deals with innovations and it is true that almost all new innovations need discussion to show how they work and why they are acceptable. Unfortunately, the ever-fashionable term "innovation" is often emotive and meaningless.

To say that a program is innovative can mean that a practice is outside the norms of schools in that country, even though it is conservative and well-established in other places. (PIAU, 1977:51) This might well be one of the most important meanings of the term because it fits most of the best innovations in higher education. A comparison of traditional styles of European higher education yields many examples of programs which would appear very "innovative" in North America. Examples include bachelor degrees denoting readiness for original research, bachelor degrees by original research, higher degrees by research only, earned "honorary" higher doctorates, and access to Ph.D. programs without formal education but proven ability in research.

To say that a program is innovative can also mean any of the following:

1. It is interdisciplinary.
2. It uses self-study materials.
3. It is designed for practitioners.
4. It leads to an assessment degree.
5. It is available by part-time study.
6. It is available by correspondence.
7. It uses behaviorally-stated objectives.
8. It depends on electronic communications.
9. It adapts an existing model to a local situation.
10. It awards credit for evaluated non-school learning.
11. It is designed for people who would not otherwise study.

In many cases, then, innovation is little more than adopting an alternative model, or manipulating or combining already well-established models, usually of delivery systems.

The term is also a marketing euphemism that hides the undesirable. An "innovative" program might also have one or more of the following characteristics:

1. Its purposes are unclear. (Usher, 1986:247)
2. It is unaccreditable. (The literature on degree mills gives many examples.)
3. It is experimental or unproven. (Bear, 1980:28)
4. Its delivery system is weak and inadequate.
5. It has too few resources to claim to be traditional.
6. It lays outside the scope of local accreditors who might be very conservative or uncooperative, or only accredit particular kinds of programs.
7. Its program directors are unwilling to seek formal recognition because they fear embarrassing evaluation results.
8. Its program directors incorrectly believe their program is too innovative to be accreditable. (Such a belief might have been true in the past.

The term is more smoke than fire; it seldom refers to something new, such as the removal of academic prerequisites for admission to a degree program ("open access"). As innovations are seldom directly concerned with what students really learn, they are very peripheral to cognitive accreditation. Accreditors can evaluate the few cases of real innovations on a case-by-case basis.

Admittedly, any definition of extension education is to some extent arbitrary. For accreditation purposes, it is not really different from campus study and an adequate accreditation model should encompass all types of delivery systems, even including correspondence. In fact, when schools blend both campus and extension types without distinction, it is impossible to accredit one type without the other. To say that it is identifiable only as a delivery system and that innovation is largely similar to non-innovation almost seems to destroy the subject. Such would only be true if extension education had seemed to need a separate accreditation system. However, the evidence supports a unified model of accreditation that can handle increasingly diverse kinds of education.