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CAUT Policies

Policy Statement on Distance Education

CAUT is dedicated to the removal of barriers that traditionally restrict access to and success in post-secondary institutions and to increasing equality and equity of educational opportunity for all Canadians.  Distance education is one medium that allows post-secondary educational institutions to pursue these goals.  Post-secondary institutions’ employers may nonetheless misuse distance education techniques to increase managerial control over academic staff and/or as a way to save money.

Distance education can provide students, particularly members of groups traditionally under-represented in higher education, flexibility and choice in place and time of access to instructors, peers and learning materials.

Distance education provides institutions with the ability to teach and service students over a wide geographic area.  It requires a shift in infrastructure requirements, however, with less reliance on physical plant and more reliance on communication and information technologies.  Furthermore, the development and delivery of quality distance education courses require adequate specialized expertise provided by instructional and web space designers, editors, graphics specialists and programmers.

Because the quality of education is difficult to maintain, academic staff associations should negotiate contract language to ensure the following:

• Adequate time and resources are available to learn to use new computer technologies and distance education techniques;
• Adequate time and resources are available for the initial development and ongoing management of distance education courses (for example, the daily monitoring of computer conferences and email accounts in the case of online courses);
• Sufficient time and resources are available to develop, acquire and deliver adequate library services and pedagogic resources to support distance education programmes;
• Provision is made for the inclusion of critical library services to students, especially in the areas of information literacy and reference services;
•  Adequate professional support is available (programmers, instructional designers, editors, for example);
• Copyright ownership remains with the creator or creators of the course.
• Courses shall be taught by fully qualified academic staff.
• Academic staff have the right to determine the method of course delivery.
• Academic staff members shall have the freedom to select and use those teaching and support materials which he/she believes to be appropriate, including the freedom to use or not to use any specific technique or technology.