Regulation of E-Learning: New National and International Policy Perspectives

Meeting Participants

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Steering Committee:

Meeting Participants:

Dominique Abrioux
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A pioneer in open and distance learning, Dr. Abrioux has been with Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University, for over twenty-five years and served as president from 1995 – 2005, during which time his institution tripled its enrolment, significantly expanded its curriculum into graduate studies, and prepared for an important extension to its catchment area by becoming the first Canadian university to gain US regional accreditation (from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.) Currently on sabbatical leave, Dr. Abrioux researches, writes, and speaks on the management and transformation of distance education in Canada, particularly this impact on single mode open learning systems.

Svava Bjarnason
Svava Bjarnason is the Director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education based in London. She holds a joint appointment with the Association of Commonwealth Universities where she is the Director of Research and Strategy. Prior to joining the ACU in 1998, she was an independent consultant working in areas of policy development in higher education in the United Kingdom. The ACU has some 500 member universities across 34 Commonwealth countries while the Observatory has over 130 subscribing institutions including government ministries of education and over 80 universities.

Bruce Chaloux
Bruce Chaloux directs the 16-state Electronic Campus of the Southern Regional Education Board. He also directs SREB’s Distance Learning Policy Laboratory and is currently directing a Lumina-supported project on adult learning. He previously served in the Graduate School at Virginia Tech for 13 years, including Associate Dean for Extended Campus Programs and Director of Tech’s Northern Virginia Graduate Campus in suburban Washington, DC. He earlier was on the staff of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and was an academic affairs administrator and faculty member at Castleton State College (Vermont).

William Durden
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William G. Durden assumed his duties as President of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on July 1, 1999. He was Director of the Center for Talented Youth at The Johns Hopkins University for 16 years and member of the German Department at Johns Hopkins. For 11 of those years at Hopkins, he served as senior education consultant to the U.S. Department of State, chairing its Advisory Committee on Exceptional Children and Youth. Dr. Durden has also served as President of the Sylvan Academy of Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. and Vice President for Academic Affairs of the Caliber Learning Network, a joint distance-learning venture of Sylvan and MCI Corporation. He has published on a wide range of topics including the value of a liberal arts education, gifted and talented education, leadership, educational policy and practice, literary criticism and distance learning.

Judith Eaton
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Glen Farrell
Glen Farrell has been involved in the development of open learning systems and the use of distance education delivery models since the early 1970’s. He was the founding president of the Open University of BC and the provincial educational television network. Dr. Farrell is now involved in international consultancies that draw on his expertise in distance education, educational applications of information and communication technologies, and the management of innovative organizations. The projects have included studies on virtual education, evaluation of ICT applications in education, and, the institutional management of distance education. Dr. Farrell lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Richard Garrett
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Richard Garrett is Senior Analyst on Eduventures' Online Higher Education program (OHE). OHE is a member-driven collaborative research program, bringing together a wide range of universities and colleges. Members shape three major studies per year (e.g. on consumer demand, competitive advantage, best practices), and in addition have access to three custom studies each and a peer network. Prior to Eduventures, Richard was Deputy Director at the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) in London, UK. While at OBHE, Richard undertook research and consulting in online higher education, internationalisation and private higher education.

Kay Gilcher
Kay Gilcher serves on the postsecondary education policy staff at the US Department of Education, where she is responsible for issues related to distance education and accreditation. She has led the Distance Education Demonstration Program since 2000. Previously, Ms. Gilcher was an adjunct program officer with the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. She has extensive knowledge of distance education and technology, which derives from her fourteen years at the University of Maryland University College where she served in many positions associated with the design and delivery of distance education programs. Her last position at UMUC was as Assistant Vice President and Director, Center for the Virtual University. Prior to coming to Maryland, she was a director of career planning and placement at Cornell University.

Michael Goldstein
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Michael B. Goldstein is a member of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Dow, Lohnes and Albertson, where he is in charge of the firm's Higher Education practice. Prior to joining DL&A in 1978, Mr. Goldstein was Associate Vice Chancellor for Urban and Governmental Affairs and Associate Professor of Urban Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and before that served as Assistant City Administrator and Director of University Relations in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York. He represents a wide array of institutions, organizations and entities in the postsecondary arena, including large publicly-traded companies; major public and independent universities; individual for-profit, non-profit and public institutions of all types and sizes; investment banks and venture capital firms; higher education associations; and companies doing business in the field. He has been very active in the development of online learning and in guiding the evolution of various kinds of institutional ventures, including hybrid for- and non-profit structures. Mr. Goldstein holds a law degree from New York University, a B.A. in Government from Cornell University, and was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Urban and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.

Diane Harley
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Diane Harley, Ph.D., is a biosocial anthropologist, and directs the Higher Education in the Digital Age (HEDA), Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), University of California, Berkeley. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, Diane has created and directed research initiatives focusing on the policy implications of integrating information and communication technologies into complex academic environments. Areas of investigation include the economic analyses of technology deployment in large lecture courses, the policy implications of university teaching as e-business, analysis of how digital resources are used in humanities and social science education, and the cross border regulation of e-learning. Currently she is co-Principal investigator on the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation project: Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Collaboration. Additional work includes serving on the UC Commission on General Education in the 21st Century. She has also developed multimedia education programs and managed partnerships with the California and Florida departments of education, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Science Foundation, ABC News Interactive, and various universities, publishers, and software developers. She has held teaching positions in Anthropology and Anatomy/Physiology at UC Berkeley and Mills College.

Sally Johnstone
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Sally M. Johnstone is the executive director of WCET, the Cooperative advancing effective use of technology in higher education. Dr. Johnstone’s areas of expertise include: institutional collaborations, quality assurance issues, project development and evaluation, open educational resources, and supporting WCET members in the planning for and implementation of eLearning. Johnstone has authored dozens of publications on distance and distributed learning. She also leads workshops and gives invited addresses to higher education organizations throughout the world. In addition Johnstone consults regularly with institutions, states, and provinces. She earned her Ph. D. in experimental psychology from the UNC-Chapel Hill.

Vijay Kumar
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Dr. Vijay Kumar is the Assistant Provost and Director of Academic Computing, IS&T at MIT, providing strategic leadership for units engaged supporting educational technology. Vijay is the Principal Investigator of O.K.I (Open Knowledge Initiative), an MIT-led collaborative project to develop an open architecture for educational applications. He is a member of MIT's Council on Educational Technology, the steering committee of iCampus, an MIT-Microsoft initiative and the Advisory Committee for MIT OpenCourseware (OCW). Vijay is a member of the Applications Strategy Council for Internet2, the Advisory Board for GELC (Global Educational Learning Community and an advisor to India's National Knowledge Commission. Dr. Kumar holds a Ph.D. in Education, M.S. in Industrial Management and a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering.

Kurt Larsen
Kurt Larsen works as a Senior Program Officer at the World Bank in the Knowledge for Development Program. The aim of this program is to stimulate social and economic development in developing countries by building their capacity to access and use knowledge as a basis for enhancing competitiveness and increasing welfare. He is 48 years old and of Danish nationality. Kurt has more than 8 years experience as a Principal Analyst at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation at and in Secretary General’s Private Office at the Organization of Economic development and Cooperation (OECD). He has furthermore worked more than 10 years in the Danish Government in the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology and as an adviser to the Danish Prime Minister in education, research, information and communication as well as social welfare policies. Kurt Larsen has a Masters Degree in Geography and a Bachelors Degree in Mathematics from Aarhus University, Denmark. He has complemented his post-secondary education with an international degree in Public Administration from the École Nationale d’Administration, Paris.

Shannon Lawrence
Shannon Lawrence is currently a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), responsible for research design, data collection, and writing/editing. Formerly the Assistant Director of the Higher Education in the Digital Age project, Ms. Lawrence coordinated a two-year foundation-funded evaluation of technology enhancements in a large lecture course and co-edited a volume on distance learning efforts in research universities. She has also collaborated on national and statewide research and evaluation projects at the California Social Welfare and Education Center, the Service Learning Research and Development Center, and the National Center for Research in Vocational Education. Ms. Lawrence holds a B.A. from UC San Diego and earned her M.A. in Education from UC Berkeley.

Mark Luker
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Mark A. Luker heads Net@EDU, the EDUCAUSE-based 'thought-leadership' coalition of university CIOs and state network directors who work to advance national networking for both research and education through joint projects and federal policy. Net@EDU was the spawning ground of Internet2, and is now expanding its focus to include advanced connections between other campuses and their customers in surrounding communities and regions. Luker also leads the EDUCAUSE office of government relations and policy analysis in Washington, DC, which works with partner associations to help shape the emerging policy and legal framework of the Internet, intellectual property, and other issues of importance to higher education. Luker served for two years as program director for advanced networking at the National Science Foundation and the federal Next Generation Internet project. For five years prior to that he worked on issues of reorganization for networked access to digital information and other services as CIO at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. In this role he was active in several national projects including the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative and the Coalition for Networked Information. Luker received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and served as a faculty member and a dean at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, before moving into information technology management.

Gary Matkin
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As Dean of Continuing Education at UC Irvine since March 1, 2000, Gary Matkin oversees University Extension, Summer Session, and the UCI Distance Learning Center, which provides centralized services to UCI units interested in offering online programs. With a combined budget of $23 million, Extension offers 2,400 courses a year to approximately 30,000 students, and includes several community programs such as the Women’s Opportunity Center, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and OCTANe @ UCI, a partner program with the Orange County Technology Action Network, founded to create new innovation-based business in Orange County. Summer Session serves 11,000 students with 550 course offerings and a budget of $12 million. Prior to becoming dean at UCI, Dr. Matkin was associate dean of University Extension at UC Berkeley, where he was responsible for instructional technology initiatives, including online courses and various technology-assisted distance education programs. Dr. Matkin holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of San Francisco, an MBA and Ph.D. in Education from UC Berkeley, and is a Certified Public Accountant. An author of three books, Effective Budgeting in Continuing Education (1985), Technology Transfer and the University (1990), and Using Financial Information in Continuing Education (1997), Dr. Matkin has also written numerous articles and papers on the subjects of continuing education, distance learning, and university economic development. Dean Matkin serves as chair of the University of California Extension Deans Council and is a member of the UC system’s Technology Transfer Advisory Committee, the Standing Committee on Copyright, and the Science and Mathematics Initiative (SMI). He also serves as Principal Investigator of several Foundation grants, including a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to advise and support the Foundation’s Open Content Initiative. He also regularly consults with U.S. universities and international organizations such as the OECD (Paris) on subjects of continuing education administration, distance and online education, and regional economic development.

Martin Michaelson
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Martin Michaelson, a partner in the Washington and New York offices of the Hogan & Hartson law firm, heads the firm's higher education practice. He represents public and independent universities and colleges located throughout the United States, associations, foundations, and other organizations in the higher education field. Previously, Martin was in-house counsel at Harvard University. He is admitted to practice law in New York, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts, and is a Fellow of the National Association of College and University Attorneys.

Helen Nissenbaum
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Helen Nissenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication and Faculty Fellow at the Information Law Institute, both at New York University. She conducts research in the social, ethical, and political dimensions of information and communications technology. Her scholarly publications span the topics of privacy, property rights, electronic publication, accountability, the use of computers in education, and values in the design of computer and information systems. Her research on values in design, security, and privacy have been supported through grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Nissenbaum's books include Emotion and Focus, Computers, Ethics and Social Values (coedited with D.J. Johnson), and Academy and the Internet (co-edited with Monroe Prince) and she is a co-founding editor of the journal, Ethics and Information Technology. At Princeton University, she served as Associate Director of the University Center for Human Values and before that held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. She holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Witwatersand, Johannesburg, an M.A. in Education, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University.

Michael Offerman
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Dr. Michael J. Offerman has served as the president of Capella University since June 2001. Offerman is a frequent speaker at national conferences and brings to Capella University a wealth of experience in adult and distance learning. He has served on a number of national boards including the American Council on Education and the University Continuing Education Association. Offerman received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Iowa, a Master of Science in higher education administration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a doctorate in educational policy studies at Northern Illinois University.

Paula Peinovich
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Paula E. Peinovich, Ph.D. became the seventh president of Walden University in 2003. Before arriving at Walden, Peinovich served as vice president for academic affairs at Excelsior College, a distance-education college founded on the philosophy that a commitment to cooperation and inclusion is the means to achieving the common good. Prior to that, she was a lecturer in the distance-education doctoral programs at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, and was the executive dean at Wayne County Community College in Detroit, MI. Peinovich serves on the American Council on Education Commission on Women in Higher Education and served on the ACE Commission on Lifelong Learning from 2000 to 2003. She also served on the Board of Directors for the University Continuing Education Association from 2003-05 and is past president of the Association for Continuing Higher Education. In 1995, she received a Fulbright Fellowship and in 2003 served as an examiner for the Baldrige National Quality Program. In 2005, she was selected as one of 25 "Women Changemakers" in Minneapolis by the Minneapolis Business Journal. Dr. Peinovich received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Brian Pusser
Brian Pusser is an Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on postsecondary access and equity, the politics of higher education, the organization and governance of postsecondary institutions, and the role of state and federal policies in shaping the postsecondary arena. He is currently a principal investigator on the Emerging Pathways project, a study of nontraditional students in innovative postsecondary programs, funded by Lumina Foundation for Education.

Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić
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Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić is Chief of the Section for Reform, Innovation and Quality Assurance, in the Higher Education Division in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Her more recent responsibilities are aimed at developing policy debates on cross-border higher education covering a wide range of issues from distance education to trade in higher educational services through the Global Forum on International Quality Assurance, Accreditation and the Recognition of Qualifications (2002; 2004). One of the most recent outcomes of this work are the Guidelines on Quality Provision in Cross Border Higher Education, elaborated jointly with the OECD (2005).

Ralph Wolff
Ralph A. Wolff, Executive Director of WASC, was appointed in 1996, after serving as Associate Executive Director from 1981–1995. Wolff is responsible for setting goals, priorities, and policy for the Senior College Accrediting Commission. As Executive Director, he coordinated the extensive process leading to the 2001 Handbook of Accreditation. Prior to joining WASC, Wolff was the founder and Director of Planning of the Antioch School of Law, Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Antioch, and a law professor at the University of Dayton. A graduate of Tufts University, Wolff received his JD with honors from the National Law Center at George Washington University