Be it resolved that ADEC leadership will promote multi-institutional collaboration and develop a climate to better define interconnected educational and business practices and procedures. The Board of directors challenges ourselves and our colleagues within the consortium to draw upon our collective resources more efficiently through inter-institutional, multi-institutional initiative and other collaborative efforts. We resolve to better respond to the needs and priorities of our clientele as we use advanced communication technologies together. We further resolve to use ADEC financial resources to support program consistent with interconnection, interoperability, and collaboration.

• Academic credit transfer between ADEC institutions
• Academic credit transfer between ADEC institutions and other
• Member institution policies for distance learning costs
• Development of "smart" software
• Elimination of "turf barriers"
• Development of multi-institutional degrees, courses, and certificate programs in high-priority need/demand areas
• Academic/administrative barriers impeding the design and delivery of distance education programs
• Quality distance education criteria and assessment measures

The outcomes of the individual task groups assigned to address each point of the charge has resulted in a body of work, recommendations, tools, and future charges for implementation known as IDEAL1. The complete report is available on the ADEC Web site.

So What Is IDEAL?

The report of the IDEAL committee is intended to stimulate the future-oriented thinking and conversation that we must have to ensure that we continue to have a world-class higher education system ready to meet the twenty-first century. It is neither prescriptive nor suggestive of revolution. It does suggest that we cannot be content with the status quo but must begin to experiment with different administrative arrangement for academic programs, professional development, and nonformal education in our core mission areas, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

In short, the report recommendations challenge the consortia and higher education in general to

• evolve toward more clearly delineated standards for transfer of credit within major areas of study.
• develop a nationally available database and administrative systems for the cataloging, listing, and marketing and evaluation of distance learning products.
• overcome historical but outmoded "turf barriers" that prevent progress toward a consortial, collaborative, and systematic approach to distance education.
• collaborate with all appropriate academic, governmental, and interested parties to design and develop multi-institutional curricula and systems that facilitate a faculty-based, market-drive collaborative process.
• review and define quality distance education criteria and assessment tools.

Implementation

The resulting recommendations and discussion pieces from IDEAL1 produced a series of guidelines and tools. We summarize them here but highly recommend that administrators and faculty look at the ADEC Web site to understand and contemplate the depth and vision of the IDEAL1 effort.

A. Guidelines for Articulation of Distance Courses Offered through ADEC

The guidelines relate to uniform standards for transferring agricultural, natural resource, veterinary, and human science distance course credits among member institutions. Thirty-six academic deans are signatories to this document. The full text is available on the Web site.

B. Distance Education-Ready Checklist

Environmental forces are pushing higher educational institutions into the new age of information and consumer-drive markets. A real issue is the transformation of the existing higher education environment over time into a new learning industry that will be global, span K-12 learning, and involve a far greater range of learning enterprises. The Distance Education-Ready checklist can help institutions assess where they stand in the development of distance education delivery.

The checklist poses more than forty questions under five categories: institutional commitment, registration, faculty issues, marketing and partnerships, and records and credit banking. The questions are designed to help individual institutions focus on current and emerging issues in distance education. For example:

• How knowledgeable are your legislators, administrators, etc.?
• Does your institution have a strategic plan for distance education?
• Is your institution willing to put sufficient resources into a distance education plan?
• Does your institution permit cross-enrollment of students at multiple institutions?
• What policies do you have in place to ensure faculty involvement?
• Do you have the appropriate technical and creative support systems in place for faculty?
• Do your reward systems encourage faculty participation in distance education?
• Have you done a careful market analysis to match need with capacity?
• Are your student record systems able to accommodate the needs of a distant student?

The complete checklist is a valuable assessment tool. We encourage its use, and like all other tools and documents, it is available on the ADEC Web site.

C. Eliminating Turf Barriers

This document stresses several suggestions that can help an institution address the formidable and complex "turf" issues that vary from university to university and college to college. Its suggestions address capacity, interest, knowledge, and collaborative possibilities. It promotes standards, evaluation, and quality issues in the process of reducing the "barriers" to a manageable few.

D. The ADEC Telecommunications and Development Grant Awards

In cooperation with CREES/USDA, almost a million dollars has been directed nationally in support of distance learning efforts - from credit courses to extension programs to planning grants. More recently, more than $50,000 was awarded to eight projects encompassing a dozen collaborating universities. The money leveraged additional resources that helped develop learning modules such as "Medical Nutrition Therapy," "Master Gardener Botany Training," "Integrated Natural Resource Management," "Horticultural Distance Learning Modules," and others. The projects were developed under one of IDEAL's best products - the guiding principles.

E. The Guiding Principles for Distance Teaching and Learning

The principles are intended to serve as guidelines for identifying and evaluating Web-based credit courses and nonformal educational programs that may be developed for face-to-face as well as distance instruction. They address support for services and administrative policies and are included on the ADEC Web site.

The guiding principles are:

• Design active and effective learning.
• Support the needs of learners.
• Develop and maintain the technological and human infrastructure.
• Sustain administrative and organizational commitment.

They suggest a clear purpose for the learning experience, tightly focused outcomes and objectives, learners who are actively engaged, and the use of a variety of media. Most critically, they exhort faculty to empower learners through new knowledge using a modular development process and the encouragement of critical thinking.

The deans and academic heads that make up Board of Directors of the ADEC consortia are pleased with the thoughtful work of the teams that developed the IDEAL report, tools, and guidelines. Now the challenge is implementation. To that end, IDEAL2 is charged with furthering the work of IDEAL1. We invite your active participation, discussion, and help in the coming months to create a true collaborative and consortial approach to distance education.

Please refer to the ADEC Web site for the complete IDEAL1 documents, our searchable course database, news, international and business partnerships, and discussion of emerging issues and technologies.

For more information please contact:
Janet Poley, ADEC President
Box 830952
C218 Animal Science
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68583-0952
Voice: 402-472-7000
Fax: 402-472-9060
E-mail:jpoley@unl.edu