Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA)

Virginia Moxley (Kansas State University, USA), Sue Maes (Kansas State University, USA), and Dawn Anderson (Kansas State University, USA)
Copyright: © 2010 |Pages: 130
EISBN13: 9781616922009|DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-870-3.ch008
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Abstract

This chapter will examine the organizational and technological challenges encountered by the highly successful Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (Great Plains IDEA) since its members began offering multi-university online academic programs in 2000. Members include the following universities: Colorado State, Iowa State, Kansas State, Texas Tech, Michigan State, Missouri, Montana State, Nebraska, North Dakota State, Oklahoma State, and South Dakota State. Inter-institutional online academic programs are a cost-effective means of rapidly increasing access and addressing emerging educational needs. The chapter explains how the Great Plains IDEA began, operates and has evolved, as well as the mistakes made, lessons learned, and upcoming challenges. A major technological challenge was identifying a secure multi-institution enrollment system for sharing student data between enrolling and teaching institutions the award-winning ExpanSIS system. The authors hope that higher education leaders will be convinced that inter-institutional collaboration is a viable solution to many higher education challenges.
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