{"id":8411,"date":"2024-12-23T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/?p=8411"},"modified":"2024-12-23T08:37:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T14:37:53","slug":"reflecting-on-30-years-of-distance-education-leadership-retiring-wcet-executive-director-russ-poulin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/reflecting-on-30-years-of-distance-education-leadership-retiring-wcet-executive-director-russ-poulin\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on 30+ Years of Distance Education Leadership: Retiring WCET Executive Director Russ Poulin"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Russ Poulin began working with WCET 30 years ago, distance education looked very different than it does now. This was prior to web browsers making the internet accessible, and the leading edtech was room-to-room video between institutions and telecourses using the television broadcast bandwidth or television satellites. Poulin even remembers one project that involved a plane with a broadcast antenna circling over the transmission area<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Poulin had been involved in establishing room-to-room video programs throughout North Dakota. Because the state\u2019s population is distributed thinly over a large area, the local joke, Poulin says, is that \u201cNorth Dakota is a mid-size city with very long streets. So there was a lot of need and a lot of interest in distance education. One of the things that got me working on it was the need for healthcare in rural areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

In particular, that early distance education technology was especially taken up by nursing and social work programs to extend training to the distant neighborhoods of the state, and it was also an important resource for tribal institutions.<\/p>\n

Up until then, most distance education projects were within a single state\u2019s system, but in the early 1990s WCET was beginning to develop multi-state initiatives, which Poulin was brought on to support. \u201cThat was a fun short-term project that was only supposed to be a couple of years,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd now, 30 years later, I’m still here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until Dec. 31, that is, when Poulin retires as the WCET Executive Director<\/a>. In between then and now, he has been a leader in innovative instruction and student support, federal and state policy, and building strategic alliances to support distance education.<\/p>\n

From margin to center<\/h2>\n

Reflecting on what has changed in distance education during his career, Poulin points to the significance it plays in education overall.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite often it would be off in these continuing education units, and I’m not sure some of the faculty even knew it was there,\u201d he says. \u201cIt slowly grew over time, and then there was more use of the same digital technologies in the regular classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Covid-19 emergency accelerated that cultural change, and \u201cwe’ve gone from this being this little thing way off on the edge to something like 57 or 59 percent of students take at least one distance ed course in a year, and that doesn’t count hybrid courses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now most on-campus faculty are incorporating asynchronous elements into their traditional courses, and many want to include online courses in their own schedule. \u201cDistance ed is pervasive throughout the entire institution now,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don’t always want to acknowledge that and build the infrastructure to reflect that. But the demand is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poulin says another example of how distance learning has moved from margin to center is Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae itself \u2014 a nonprofit devoted, along with its 13 partner organizations, to encouraging evidence-based and equitable implementations of digital learning technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thank the funders for entrusting WCET with this important mission and serving as Every Learner\u2019s home,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course, the progress can be credited to the hard work of the Every Learner partners and the dedicated staff.\u201d<\/p>\n