2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Multi-campus instruction (MCI), also known as distributed learning, is an instructional format that involves a single instructor in a classroom at one location (the "local" cohort) synchronously teaching “local” and, "remote" cohorts of students that are situated at other campuses. Students in the “remote” cohorts attend through Information and Communications Technology (ICT) such as video conferencing equipment. Courses and even full programs offered in this format are becoming increasingly more popular at institutions around the world (Martin et al., 2020).
MCI courses provide a lot of benefits to students as well as faculty and administration. These include increased access to experts, a greater variety of courses offered, easier transfer between institutions/campuses, and greater consistency in standards. They can provide educational possibilities to students in remote communities without requiring relocation, which can be a significant deterrent to rural students. They offer benefits to instructors by being more engaging than a fully remote model, allowing for a greater variety of students and interest, and access to resources at other institutions. There are also benefits to administration, such as potential for reduced program costs, inter-campus collaboration, and transparency and information sharing.
Challenges related to successfully administering courses in this format are often underestimated. Many see this format as simply teaching to a video camera along with a room full of students. Common challenges related to building community and maintaining equity often occur with commensurate impacts on student experience. Students in the “remote” cohort often feel ignored or deprioritized, while the “local” cohort can perceive the other cohorts are hindering their learning. Beyond pedagogy, there are also challenges to instructors in scheduling exams and teaching assistants across institutions, administrators in course room and time allocation, and directors in ensuring both quality and curricular alignment. IT challenges, along with communication challenges are always present. Delivering a course in this format for the first time can be daunting.
Resources do exist to support instructors, but they are not easy to find and/or readily available. Many have been removed or are no longer current (Anderson and Date-Huxtable, 2011) . This paper provides an introduction to planning and administering MCI courses. It identifies and lays out common considerations one must make when delivering an MCI course, including maintaining equity across cohorts, contextual differences across cohorts, content delivery and student activity planning, communication, IT resources, human resources (teacher’s assistant, TA), and scheduling.