Milestones in Indiana Distance Education

 

Too often, we Hoosiers take what we do for granted, without realizing how far ahead of other states we are in important ways. Distance Education is a prime example of our misplaced modesty. Indiana's colleges and universities have been leaders in extending access to college via distance education for nearly a hundred years, and use among Indiana K-12 schools has been mounting since the early 1990's.

• Indiana University 's independent study program began in 1912 and remains one of the largest correspondence programs in the world.
• In the 1930's Purdue University used radio to deliver university classes to students at home.
• In the late 1950's Purdue provided leadership with other Great Lakes states to beam education into elementary and high schools throughout the Midwest from an airplane circling over northern Indiana and Illinois.
• In the mid-1960's, Purdue and IU asked Ball State and Indiana State Universities to join them in establishing a new shared service called the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System , now well known as IHETS, to share educational resources via voice, data, and video connections. Using the IHETS TV network, the four universities plus the IU School of Medicine have delivered graduate degrees and continuing education to literally hundreds of thousands of learners since then.
• In the mid-1980's, Ball State University received legislative approval to establish in Muncie a new school for gifted and talented high school students—the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities —with the commitment that their advanced classes would be made available to students throughout the state via technology. Since then, thousands of high school students in Indiana have taken advantage of opportunities for Advanced Placement courses, and literally millions of students throughout the nation benefit each year from the high-quality “electronic field trips” that have taken students “live” to educational sites from world-class museums to South American rain forests to the halls of Congress.
• In 1992, the IHETS Board of Directors created a new unit of the consortium—the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education —to assure that all Hoosiers would have access to a wide range of postsecondary education, with special attention to associate and bachelor's degree programs.
• In 1994 the Partnership launched the nation's first state “virtual university,” the Indiana College Network —which remains one of the largest such systems in the number and range of programs offered as well as the number of people served.
• At about the same time, the “Opportunity Indiana” agreement between the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission and Ameritech led to creation of the Vision Athena network, providing high-quality video connections to K12 schools in Ameritech service areas to enrich interactive learning opportunities for our elementary and high school students.
• In 1994 the Indiana Commission for Higher Education inaugurated an “electronic campus” to enhance access to college in the southeastern region of Indiana. Out of that has grown the College Cooperative Southeast, CCS , a network of active learning centers in 12 counties drawing on distance education to improve the lives and job prospects of thousands of area residents.
• In 2000, the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township launched the Indiana Online Academy , a major “virtual high school” initiative. Created in partnership with other central Indiana school systems, the Indiana Corporation for Educational Technology, IHETS, and Indiana University, the IOA now enrolls students in high schools throughout Indiana.
• In 2003, five school corporations in southeastern Indiana formed the Ripley County Learning Network , which now offers an array of middle- and high-school classes to schools in other parts of the state.