Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance

Colorado State University, Iowa State University, Kansas State University, Texas Tech University Michigan State University, University of Missouri, Montana State University, University of Nebraska North Dakota State University, Oklahoma State University, South Dakota State University

The Evolution of the Great Plains IDEA

First convened in 1994, the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA) has evolved from a collegial group of Human Sciences academic administrators who shared a common interest in educating rural professionals through the use of distance technologies and shared courses to its current status as a premier post-baccalaureate distance education collaboratory that provides inter-institutional masters degrees and graduate certificates and develops policy and practice models for inter-institutional distance education programs.

The alliance began as an idea—a modest idea. The College of Human Resources and Family Sciences at the University of Nebraska had implemented a distance education masters degree program and convened a meeting of Great Plains area human sciences deans to determine if others had distance education graduate courses that might be available for use by their students and to invite other institutions to enroll students in their courses.

The meeting stoked both the competitive and the cooperative tendencies of the participants. A new benchmark for graduate program access had been set and no participant wanted the College he/she led to be “behind the curve.” Major obstacles in the early years were the lack of Internet connectivity, the lack of commercially available and easy to use courseware, and the lack of distance education experience of the faculty.

Early alliance initiatives included (1) informing faculty about the changing marketplace for graduate education, (2) training faculty in the use of distance technologies to promote engaged, graduate level learning at a distance, and (3) the development of a marketplace for sharing distance education courses.

The development of inter-institutional programs could not be achieved by program faculty and administrators alone. Inter-institutional graduate programs must meet institutional graduate program standards. Graduate deans were brought into the conversation and they contributed to the creation of enabling policy and practice environments at partner institutions. With the support of graduate program administrators, inter-institutional programs became administratively possible—only with faculty support would they become academic realities.

Inter-institutional programs create all sorts of problems for institutions to solve. Generally the key to solving the problem is not in the department that provides the academic home for the program. The solution to needs such as program price resides at the institutional finance office, the solution to enrollment and records management resides in the registrar’s office, and so on. Program administrators cannot form a stable program alliance without supportive institutional policies, practices, and most importantly, people who fulfill relevant institutional responsibilities.