Distance education leadership: An essential role for the new century

A new role for the professoriate in the new century has been recognized and encouraged, especially as technology-assisted instruction has proliferated and changed the means by which faculty and students interact, as well as the manner in which educational entities must now do business to meet the demands of a digitized society. The literature describing the rapid evolution of distance education delivery systems over the past twenty years, particularly in higher education venues, has frequently categorized this phenomenon in three stages, from correspondence education, to technology-assisted education and, more recently, networked education. Although all three remain, with variants on each of these models, one theme which is consistent is that we are witnessing dramatic changes in how instruction is designed and delivered across time and space. As this dynamic becomes more frequent and more pervasive, faculty have been admonished to be more receptive and adaptive to opportunities for playing exciting new roles in the distance education arena.