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Browning
Questions for consideration at the institutional level along with recommendations for next steps
are summarized in the concluding section.
TERMINOLOGY
Higher education is overflowing with terminology that often finds its way into our day to day
conversation without introduction or definition. Porter, Hedegaard, and Straut (1997) explain that
the virtual campus is where students, faculty and staff learn, instruct and administer in a virtual
space rather than in brick and mortar buildings. The virtual office fulfills all of the roles of t e
traditional, centralized office although the employees work, for the most part, at a home office or
other offsite location and collaborate electronically with occasional to no physical contact with
other employees. In both the traditional and virtual office, the organization’s mission remains the
same, but some business procedures change in the latter to accommodate collaboration at a
distance. Telecommuting involves communicating, collaborating, and working while
geographically separated from the central office via electronic devices such as e-mail, faxes,
videoconferencing, or modems. Telecommuting is more relevant to periodic remote employment,
where the employee spends the majority of the required work time in a central office. Distance
learning is defined as that educational process that occurs when instruction is delivered to
students physically remote from the main campus. Distributed learning is not just a new term to
replace distance learning. Distributed learning is an instructional model that allows instructors,
students, and content to be located in different, non-centralized locations so that instruction and
learning occur independent of time and place. The distributed learning model can be used in
combination with traditional classroom-based courses, with tradition distance learning courses, or
it can be used to create wholly virtual classrooms. As we continue through the 21 st century,
institutions of higher education cannot rely solely on traditional methods, approaches, and onsite
faculty office space. What, then, are the opportunities and challenges associated with the virtual
faculty office?
OPPORTUNITIES
Self-Management with Guidance: Management is defined by businessdictionary.com (2007) as
the organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain
policies and achievement of clearly defined objectives. Faculty members who function within the
virtual office setting ideally manage their work by achieving clearly defined objectives but
without the micro management that often occurs within the traditional office setting.
Additionally, the virtual office setting allows for increased opportunities of uninterrupted time in
which faculty may more fully develop ideas, conduct research, and engage in online dialogue.
Nonetheless, self-managed faculty members do not function without guidance. Faculty guidance
may be accomplished through daily online contact via e-mail or as scheduled within the virtual
meeting format. Further evidence of the importance of self managed work is discussed by Trunk
(2006). Trunk asserts that workers will continue quit regular jobs to gain more control over their
time because quality of life in general increases when individuals have a work life that they can
control.
Productivity: According to Bergman (2004) of the United States Census Bureau, 4.2 million
people worked at home in 2000, up from 3.4 million in 1990. There is no doubt that
telecommuting is becoming more widely accepted in the U.S. and worldwide. Although little
data exists as to the number of institutions of higher education involved in virtual office spaces
for faculty, there are significant savings associated with the option. With declining budgets and
increasing enrollment in higher education, there is a continual push to find ways to get more
scholar for the dollar. Demands for increased levels of faculty productivity continue to be heard
with greater frequency than anytime in the past. Additionally, institutions need to find new ways
to accomplish their missions while competing with other institutions for a limited pool of funds.
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