Learning
and Teaching in Cyberspace
by
Greg Kearsley
=======================================================================
Contents (Version 5/00)
7/ Design and Development of Online Courses
8/ Organizations and Networking
10/ When the Electrons Hit the Screen
11/ Education in the Information Age
13/ Sources of Further Information
========================================================================
1/ Introduction
The past history of computers in education
There is a big difference between the earlier and current forms of online learning. The earlier type, called Computer Based Instruction (CBI), focused on the interaction between the student and computer drills, tutorials or simulations. Today, the prevailing paradigm is Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), where the primary form of interaction is between students and instructors, mediated by the computer. CBI is usually individualized (self-study) learning, while CMC involves teacher/tutor facilitation. In this book, when we refer to online learning, we are always talking about CMC, not CBI.
An interesting slice of the history of educational computing can be viewed through the work of Seymour Papert -- see his MIT home page at http://papert.www.media.mit.edu/people/papert Or visit the Connected Family site at http://www.ConnectedFamily.com
Themes that shape online education
Collaboration
Without any doubt, the biggest single change that online education brings about is an increased tendency towards collaboration amongst students and teachers.
EXAMPLE: The Global SchoolNet Foundation (http://www.gsn.org) is dedicated to creating interaction among kids around the world. It is derived from the FrEd mail system, an early email system for students and educators.
Connectivity
Online education provides fantastic connectivity. Students can easily connect with each other and their instructors through email and conferencing. Students can also connect easily with parents as many students away at college do ("Dad/Mom: Please send more money"). Even more impressive is that students can interact directly with experts in their field of study. Anyone who knows how to use an online address directory (such as 411.com) can track down someone's email address. Indeed many educational projects have been set up to put students and experts in contact and foster a dialog.
EXAMPLE: The Science Learning Network provides access to collaborative science projects (http://www.sln.org)
Student-Centered
Another common characteristic of online education is being student-centered. While teachers and faculty still play the key role in creating and organizing a class, students largely determine its direction by virtue of their participation and activities. Instructors define the goals and facilitate or manage the learning process; students discover the content on their own and carry out assignments or projects. This means that online courses are often less structured (more chaotic?) than traditional classes.
EXAMPLE: The Jason Project (http://www.jasonproject.org) gives students all over the world a chance to directly participate in scientific projects led by Dr. Robert Ballard.
Unbounded
It is often said that online education eliminates the walls of the classroom. In the sense that it gives students access to information and people anywhere in the world, this is true. It is also true that opens up the classroom to many additional students. Online education removes boundaries having to do with where and when students learn -- as well as who can be a learner. It is a great boon to individuals who live in remote places, who are disabled, who are relocated frequently, or who are somehow different than "typical" students enrolled in a program of study.
EXAMPLE: MayaQuest (http://www.classroom.com) was the first of an ongoing interactive expedition series that has involved millions of students.
Community
Education takes place in a community, whether it is the community of learning defined by a particular school or organization, or an actual physical community such as a town or city. Online education can bring together any community by increasing accessibility and connectivity. The simple step of creating a home page on the web that provides links to previously separate elements, or an online directory with email or telephone numbers, helps to establish a community.
EXAMPLE: Blacksburg Electronic Village (http://www.bev.net) - A college town becomes one of the countries first wired communities.
Exploration
Many online activities involve some sort of adventure or discovery learning format. If computer games can be so much fun, why shouldn't "serious" learning be fun too! Young children in particular, love to explore and online classes in K-8 often use this approach. It is also a good format for museums and science centers --where people go to be entertained as well as enlightened. A more formal type of exploration is problem-based learning which is commonly used in professional education (i.e., law, medicine, engineering, business). In this approach, students are given problem situations or case studies and asked to work out a solution, diagnosis, strategy, or design. Problem-based learning is very compatible with online education since access to resources and expertise is a key aspect of problem-solving (see for example, http://spicy.atd.depaul.edu/pbl).
EXAMPLE:The San Francisco Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.edu) An online museum that offers plenty of interesting activities.
Shared Knowledge
While the sharing of knowledge is at the core of education, we have only been able to do it in limited ways prior to computer networks. Books are obviously a wonderful technology for doing this -- relatively inexpensive, highly portable, and long-lasting. But only a tiny fraction of human knowledge gets published and a bookshelf or library can only hold a small number. Putting information on the web (or some other electronic format) makes it immediately available to anyone in the world with a suitable computer connection. Everyone can be an author/publisher (for better or for worse).
EXAMPLE: Many government agencies, like the USGS offer educationally oriented web pages (http://info.er.usgs.gov)
Multisensory
We know that learning is more effective when it involves multiple sensory channels (i.e., visuals, color, movement, sounds, voice, touch, smell). We also know that individuals have different sensory preferences (called cognitive styles). Multimedia technology (much of which is available via the web) can provide certain kinds of multisensory learning experiences. While these interactions are not as rich or complete as first-hand experiences (e.g., no touch or smell), they are often much better than traditional classroom learning activities which are based upon "talk and chalk".
EXAMPLE: The Digital Safari was created by the students of the Mt Diablo High School Multimedia Academy (http://intergate.cccoe.k12.ca.us/mdtech).
Authenticity
One of the correlates of connectivity, community, and shared knowledge is that online education is highly authentic in nature. Ironically, the virtual world is more real than the usual classroom. Because students can access actual databases and experts, their learning activities are realistic. The lack of realism in traditional instruction has often been identified as a major weakness of education at all levels. Indeed, one of the reasons that students often give for disillusionment with school or college is that it lacks "real-world" relevance.
EXAMPLE: The Math Forum (http://forum.swarthmore.edu) is a source of mathematics help and information provided by the faculty and students at Swarthmore College.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Odasz: Out in the Online Wilderness
It is fitting that our first profile be of Frank Odasz, a person who has taken on some of the biggest challenges in online education. From 1988-1998, Frank ran the Big Sky Telegraph, a project to help teachers and students in remote areas of Montana discover the power of online learning, with particular attention to Native American groups. Later he worked with native groups in Alaska and elsewhere. He written extensively about online learning communities and has proposed a four-level model of online learning.
To learn more, see http://lone-eagles.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Networks
Obviously, online education involves the use of computer networks for learning and teaching. However, this can include large-scale public networks such as the internet or small local area networks (LANs) in a specific building. The latter may be the basis for an electronic classroom or a campus/school computing system. In most institutions and organizations, LANs are connected to public networks, making the distinction transparent to individual users.
EXAMPLE: The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) is a good source of information about educational networks (http://www.cosn.org).
There are many efforts underway to develop improved networks with increased bandwidth and faster transmission times -- see the Next Generation Internet site (http://www.ngi.gov) or the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking (http://www.cren.net) for more details.
Higher Education
Without a doubt, online education is most extensive at universities and colleges, especially at the graduate level. This popularity has mostly to do with the easy availability of computer and networks (remember the internet began as a research network among universities). However, it also has to do with mature, motivated students capable of the independent study required in many online courses, and faculty familiar enough with network applications (e.g., email, the web) to offer such courses. The presence of good technical support in terms of computer software, networks, and instructional development is also a major factor.
EXAMPLE: The Charles Dickens web site created by Mitsuharu Matsuoka at Nagoya University (http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Dickens.html).
EXAMPLE: GASNET (Global Anesthesiology Server Network) is an example of a cross-institutional site for medical education hosted by Yale University (http://gasnet.med.yale.edu).
K-12 Schools
For K-12 schools, the major value of the internet is to provide a gigantic online library system. Students and teachers are no longer limited by the confines of a single textbook or a small library collection, but can seek out information just about anywhere. Furthermore, finding information online is more like a field trip than a visit to the library, because the sites visited are often very rich in details. Indeed, electronic field trips to the web sites of museums, zoos, foreign countries, government agencies (e.g. NASA), even the White House, have become a popular classroom activity.
EXAMPLE: Eduscapes is a site developed by Annette Lamb and colleagues that provides many resources for K12 learning. (http://eduscapes.com )
Another very popular application of networks at the K-12 level are collaborative projects, either within a single class, or across multiple schools. Students are organized into small groups, each with a project topic, then use networks to collect relevant information and prepare a report or presentation. The network aspects could involve a LAN within a school that accesses CD-ROMs, or more likely, accessing the web via the internet. Many of these projects involve interaction with students at other schools via email, often in an international context.
EXAMPLE: Web 66 is an web site intended to help schools get online, hosted by the University of Minnesota (http://web66.coled.umn.edu )
Corporations & Government Agencies
Most large organizations make extensive use of networks, although more for general purpose information management purposes than anything having specifically to do with education. In fact, educational and training applications tend to be integrated with other applications in the form of help, performance support, or knowledge management systems.
EXAMPLE: Many technology companies are providing technical training online such as Microsoft Corp. (http://www.microsoft.com/training)
Non-profit Organizations
There are a wide assortment of non-profit organizations that play an important educational role in U.S. society, many of whom have developed an online presence. This includes professional and trade associations who conduct various educational activities for their members and the general public including publications, conferences, and workshops. In addition, there are large service organizations such as the Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org) and the AARP (http://www.aarp.org) as well as hundreds of smaller ones in every community.
EXAMPLE: The World Bank is a good online education resource (http://www.worldbank.org)
The Home
Ultimately, online education could have its greatest impact in the home. Radio and television have done this, but with limited educational value. As the percentage of computers in homes gradually increases, it is likely that more and more educational activities take place there. For adults, they will be used for continuing education and job-related training; college and K-12 students will use them for class work. Of course, a lot of online learning at home will be informal in nature, like figuring out what's wrong with the cat, planning vacations, or shopping for a new car.
EXAMPLE: The Home School World site (http://www.home-school.com), one of many online resources devoted to home schooling.
EXAMPLE: The Creating Learning Communities site created
by Ib Bang in Denmark focuses on home school efforts (http://www.futureworld.dk/ccl-llc/book.htm
Public spaces
Finally, there is one additional learning environment that electronic systems make possible: public spaces. These are kiosks placed in shopping malls, airports, convention centers, hotel lobbies, cafeterias, hospital waiting areas, etc. While such systems typically provide general information such as location or services available, they can be used for more sophisticated purposes. For example, those located in medical facilities can provide patient or health policy information; systems in government buildings (e.g., INS; IRS; SSA) can provide explanations of application or claim procedures; even those in tourist information centers can provide historical background or access to community resources.
EXAMPLE: Travel information sites are excellent candidates for public access settings, e.g., a guide to Paris (http://www.paris.org)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Margaret Riel: Learning Circles
Margaret Riel was one of the first researchers to focus on the development of global collaborative networks at the K-12 level. She lead a project called "Learning Circles" which originally involved a partnership with AT&T and is now called I*EARN. The key to this project was the formation of small groups that followed well-defined rules for online interaction. She subsequently was involved in the "Passport to Knowledge" project which connect students to scientists and allows students to participate directly in scientific discovery. She is currently the Associate Director of the Center for Collaborative Research in Education (CCRE) at the University of California, Irvine. Her home page is http://www.gse.uci.edu/mriel.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email
Email is the foundation for all forms of online learning and teaching. Indeed it is quite possible to use nothing more than email in a course and still have a highly valuable learning experience. Email is also a very cost-effective application from the point-of-view of computing and network resources needed; it works with most minimal of equipment, software and facilities.
Threaded Discussions
After email, the second most commonly used capability for online education is a threaded discussion system, also called asynchronous conferencing, a forum. or a bulletin board. While there are many different variations of these systems (for a survey, see http://www.thinkofit.com), they all work in the same fashion: topics and subtopics are created and people post messages under any topic/subtopic desired. Messages include the sender's name, a subject title for the message, and the text of the message. To read messages, you select the topic/subtopic of interest and click on the messages available.
Realtime Conferencing
Realtime conferencing covers any form of online synchronous interaction. The simplest form of realtime conference is a chat session in which participants exchange typed messages with everyone seeing the messages as soon as they are sent. Each message is preceded by the name of the sender so it is possible to identify who said what.
EXAMPLE: ICQ provides real-time connectivity to people around the world (http://www.icq.com)
MUDs/MOOs
MUDs (Multi User Domains) and MOOs (Multiuser Object-Oriented) are an interesting category of realtime conferences used in some education settings. MUD/MOOs allow many people to share a virtual word, usually set up as "rooms" containing objects which can be viewed or manipulated. People can interact with others by sending chat messages as well as performing simulated actions (e.g., standing/sitting, waving arms, running, etc). The original MUDs were designed as "dungeon and dragon" games in which people would hunt for treasures. MOOs are a later development of MUDs that employ object-oriented programming techniques and are easier to develop and extend (including inclusion of multimedia components).
EXAMPLE:Athena University uses a MOO for its Virtual Education Environment (http://www.athena.edu )
EXAMPLE:The English department at the University of Florida encourages students to conduct their class discussion in MOOville, a MOO which is part of their Networked Writing Environment (http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/writing).
For more about the use of MUDs and MOOs in education, see the E-MOO site at http://tecfa.unige.ch:4243
Desktop Video
The most advanced form of realtime conferencing are desktop video systems. A desktop video system is basically a chat system that uses video images instead of text messages. The video images (including audio) are captured by a small digital camera that is connected to the PC. These cameras are relatively inexpensive ($100-$500) and can be connected to any computer (including laptops). Using software that comes with the camera or is obtained separately, it is possible to connect to a server running a video conferencing program -- or make a direct link with another person using their IP address for a two person video session (called a point-to-point connection).
EXAMPLE:CUSeeMe is one of the oldest and most commonly used desktop videoconferencing system, originally developed at Cornell University and now distributed by White Pine Software (http://www.cuseeme.com)
Audiographics
A final category of realtime conferencing systems that needs to be mentioned is audiographics -- systems that allow audio interaction and shared graphic images or applications. Participants in the conference can hear what each other says and see the same graphic images or program screens. The graphic images are usually slides prepared with a slideshow program, although they can be drawn in realtime on the screen by any of the participants (hence these systems are often called shared whiteboards). Alternatively, an application program running on one participant's system can be seen by all participants and in most cases, controlled by anyone participating.
EXAMPLE:Microsoft
Netmeeting - A widely used audiographics system. (http://www.microsoft.com/netmeeting )
EXAMPLE:There are quite a few audiographics systems making use
of streaming media now being use in the training world - e.g. (Centra or Horizon )
Groupware
A relatively new category of software to
emerge are groupware programs which are specifically designed to facilitate
group interaction. The MUD/MOO systems mentioned in the previous sections are a
specialized case of groupware for shared worlds. Lotus Notes is currently the
most widely used groupware program and is popular in many organizations and
university programs. For example, Athabasca University in Canada uses Lotus
Notes as the basis for student interaction in its MBA program (see http://vital.athabascau.ca).
EXAMPLE:Sample screen from GroupSystems program
from Ventana East Corp(http://www.ventana-east.com)
File Transfers
A very mundane, but none-the-less, essential
aspect of online interaction is file transfer, i.e. sending a file from one
machine to another. In most cases, the file to be transferred is a word
processing document, but it could be a spreadsheet, graphic, video clip,
slideshow or program. Since email is usually limited to relatively short text
messages with no formatting, sending anything else requires a file transfer.
The general purpose tool for transferring files is a utility program called
"FTP" (File Transfer Program).
Application Software
Up to this point, we have been discussing
software exclusively concerned with networking. However, much (if not most) of
the work in online education is done with routine applications programs such as
word processing, spreadsheets, graphics editors, and slideshow software which
are used to create instructional materials or do course assignments. In many
courses, more specialized programs such as math (e.g. Mathematica, Maple,
MathCAD) or statistical tools (e.g. SPSS, Statpak) are used. In fact, almost
every discipline has a variety of programs designed for certain
teaching/learning activities. Some of these programs have been personally
developed by instructors for use in their own courses.
Simulations
There are many different types of simulation,
but all have the same fundamental structure. Simulations are based upon a model
of a specific system: mechanical, electronic, chemical, industrial, biological
or social. A system state is presented which provides the student with a number
of choices; the choice made determines the next state of the system. In a
science lab, simulations allow students to perform experiments or observe
processes that are dangerous, expensive or too time-consuming to do in
actuality. Medical students can practice surgical procedures or diagnosis on
simulated patients. Students in business schools can practice their marketing
and financial skills with simulations of companies or industries. In the
workplace, simulations allow people to practice operating or maintaining
equipment ranging from telephone switching systems to aircraft. Even more
interesting are simulations of human behavior that allow employees to improve
their management, sales, leadership or customer service skills.
EXAMPLE: The ICONS project at the University of Maryland is an
example of simulation applied to the international communications domain. (http://www.bsos.umd.edu/icons)
EXAMPLE: The online frog dissection is an example of how
simulation can be applied to biology(
http://curry.edschool.virgina.edu/go/frog)
Curriculum Development and Management
So far we have discussed online applications
for direct instructional use. There are also a large collection of programs
available to develop and manage online instruction.
There are many authoring tools for the
creation of web pages and sites (e.g., FrontPage, Web-in-a-Box). Such tools
make it relatively easy to assemble different kinds of information into a web
page and put it in HTML format (the formatting language used by the web).
Creation of multimedia involves the use of specialized programs for graphics,
video or audio editing. A program like Macromedia Director (http://www.macromedia.com) might be used
to produce an animation sequence for a tutorial or simulation. RealMedia tools
(http://www.real.com) are popular for
delivering digital audio and video segments on the web. On the other hand, a
large percentage of curriculum materials (e.g., course outlines, syllabi, study
guides, lecture notes) are created using standard application programs such as word
processing or slideshow programs.
EXAMPLE:WebCT is a widely used course delivery system that
provides a variety of course management functions.(http://www.webct.com)
There are also quite a number of web-based
course management systems that integrate many of the applications discussed in
this chapter (i.e., email, threaded discussions, realtime conferencing) into
one package. Use of such systems makes it easier for students, instructors, and
course developers since all applications work together from a common interface.
Some popular examples include: Topclass, FirstClass, WebCT, BlackBoard and
Learning Space. Such systems usually provide student gradebook functions which
make it easy for instructors to keep track of grades.
EXAMPLE: Blackboard allows anyone to create an online course
and make it available on the web at no cost or for a fee. (http://www.blackboard.com)
Comparisons and discussions of web-based
learning environments are provided at http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/choices.html
and http://multimedia.marshall.edu/cit/webct/compare/index.htm
EXAMPLE:POLIS is a web development tool developed at the
University of Arizona that facilitates the use of different instructional
dialogues. (http://polis.arizona.edu)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beverly Hunter - Computers as Tools
Beverly Hunter has been involved with
computers in education for more than three decades and during that time has
continually espoused the idea that computers are tools which should empower
individuals to take an active role in the learning process. In 1983 she
published My Students Use Computers which outlined this perspective in
detail. She has worked at a number of educational R&D centers including
HumRRO, TERC, and BBN, as well as serving as a program manager at NSF. Most of
her attention in the past decade has been on school networking and learning
communities (e.g., http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/hunter.html
)
She is currently at Boston College (http://learning.bc.edu)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Impact on Student Achievement
The starting point for most studies of
educational technology is an analysis of student achievement relative to
traditional classes. In most cases, a course which has previously been taught in
a classroom is now offered in online form, or perhaps both versions are offered
simultaneously. If the course content, instructor and student population are
all the same, in theory any differences should be attributable to the different
form of delivery. Alas, this isn't quite true since it is likely that a course
will be taught differently in online form than when done in a classroom (a
topic we shall discuss at length in Chapter 6). However, as a practical matter,
it is useful to know what impact an online version will have on student
outcomes, using the conventional course as a base for comparison.
EXAMPLE:The U.S. Department of Education is important source
of information about research in online education. (http://www.ed.gov)
Evaluation of Web-based Courses
With the proliferation of web-based courses
at all levels of education, there have been many evaluation studies conducted.
These evaluations tend to look at different factors depending upon the
interests of the instructor or course developers. Here are some examples at the
college/university level.
-Taming the Electronic Frontier (see http://www.virtualschool.edu/98a)
is an introductory course in telecommunications developed by Brad Cox at George
Mason University.
-As part of the BIO project (Biology
Instructional Outreach) at Iowa State University (http://project.bio.iastate.edu), an
in-depth evaluation of one course, Zoology 155, was conducted.
-At the University of Oregon, physics and
astronomy courses have been offered in on-line form for a number of years (see http://zebu.oregon.edu).
-At the University of Illinois, a number of
web-based courses have been implemented by the Sloan Center for Asynchronous
Learning Environments (SCALE) using a variety of different course authoring and
delivery tools (see http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/oakley)
EXAMPLE:Another useful source of research about
technology-based projects are the regional educational laboratories (see http://www.nwrel.org)
The Nature of Class Interaction
One of the interesting questions about online
classes is how the use of the computer changes student and instructor
interaction. Of course, the answer to this question depends upon the exact
nature of the class, i.e., which online capabilities are used, as well as the
role of the instructor. Other factors which might also affect the nature of
interaction are the discipline or subject domain, the level of learning, and
student backgrounds.
EXAMPLE:The National Science Foundation is a major funding
source for research projects involving technology in science and mathematics
education. (http://www.nsf.gov)
School-level Impact
While impact on student achievement and class
interaction are important levels of analysis, it is also important to assess
the effects at the institutional or system level. Since online education is a
major innovation which involves substantial changes in teaching methods and how
learning is delivered, its overall impact on a school system or institution
should be examined.
EXAMPLE:The Co-Nect project focuses on the impact of
technology in school reform. (http://www.co-nect.org)
EXAMPLE:ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) provides
access to the research literature on educational technology (http://ericir.syr.edu)
Virtual Conferences
A virtual conference represents a larger
scale of online interaction. Conferences are the primary means for continuing
education among professionals. They provide an opportunity to hear about new
developments and ideas, learn new techniques, and try out new products. The
virtual conference can provide most of the intellectual and social benefits of
an actual meeting without the travel and financial complications.
EXAMPLE:Many private foundations pursue action research
projects related to education and telecommunications, such as the Benton
Foundation (http://www.benton.org)
Learning Communities
Learning communities extend beyond the
timeframes of a particular course or conference and allow students to interact
over an extended time period. Learning communities are ideal for professional
or employee training which benefit from extensive interaction and sharing of
information/ideas among participants.
EXAMPLE: An interesting study of an electronic mailing list
for scholarly communication by Eva Ekeblad can be found at http://www.ped.gu.se/ekeblad/writings/earli99/multdyn.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linda Harasim - Studying the effects of
online interaction
Professor Harasim has been active for over a
decade in researching educational applications of computer networking. She has
designed,implemented, and evaluated networking applications in Canada, the
U.S., and Latin America. She is currently leader of the TeleLearning·Networks
of Centres of Excellence project which focuses primarily on the design and
development of new pedagogies and network technologies to support collaborative
learning, knowledge building, and lifelong learning. This project features over
150 researchers from education, cognitive psychology, social science, computer
science and engineering science throughout Canada collaborating online to
address some of the major challenges Canada faces in becoming a learning
society with a knowledge-based economy.
Her home page is http://fas.sfu.ca/telelearn/homepages/harasim/harasim.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learning to learn
What is most different about online learning
is that it usually provides the learner with a great deal of autonomy, i.e.,
the choice of when, where, and how to learn. We have described this earlier in
the book as being part of a student-centered approach to education. Learners
are given a lot of freedom to pursue their own interests and methods of
learning.
EXAMPLE:Homework Central is one of many online databases
designed to help students research topics (http://www.homeworkcentral.com)
However such autonomy brings with it
responsibility. Learners must possess initiative and self-discipline to study
and complete assignments. Students who lack these skills are likely to do
poorly with online classes.
EXAMPLE:The Study Skills Help site developed by Carolyn Hopper
provides help in learning skills. (http://www.mtsu.edu/~studskl)
Basic writing and communication skills are
also important for online learning, especially in the context of group
interaction. In fact, this is one of the common reasons why student has
difficulties with online learning.
EXAMPLE:The ESL Study Hall developed
by Christine Meloni provides help in basic skills. (http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gwvcusas)
The social milieu
Online learning is as much a social activity
as an individual one. Social skills are an important aspect of interacting via
computer networks, especially when collaboration is involved. Alas, most people
have little formal training in how to successfully interact or work with
others; these are skills that picked up incidentally through family or school
life. To make things even more complicated, the social milieu of online
activities is quite different from in-person interactions and requires new
skills and behaviors.
EXAMPLE:The Family Education Network provides an online
environment for family learning (http://www.familyeducation.com)
EXAMPLE:The Oneida Indian Nation is an example of preserving a
culture online. (http://www.oneidanation.org)
Parental Involvement
At the k-12 level of education, one of the
most important elements of successful learning is to have parents who are
supportive and involved in the education of their children. This includes
following their progress at school, helping with homework, and providing a
suitable learning environment at home.
EXAMPLE: ParentConnectXP is a software system from NCS
designed to make it easy for parents to follow the progress of their children
in school (http://www.ncs.com)
EXAMPLE: Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs) are one of ways
that parents can support schools (http://www.pta.org)
Engagement theory
Over the years, many different theories and models
of learning have been developed (see http://www.gwu.edu/~tip). While many of
these theories are relevant to online learning in some way, very few have been
developed specifically in this context. An exception to this is engagement
theory (see http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm)
EXAMPLE: WebQuest is an
inquiry-oriented learning model that creates student engagement. (see http://edweb.sdsu.edu/webquest/webquest.html)
EXAMPLE:The Yahooligans search page makes it easy for kids to
find information on the web. (http://www.yahooligans.com)
EXAMPLE:Study Web helps students find web sites for specific
subject areas (http://www.studyweb.com)
Netiquette
Interacting with others online requires some
specific communications behaviors -- conventions which have come to be called
"netiquette".
EXAMPLE:The Netiquette site.(http://www.albion.com/netiquette)
The Netiquette Guide written by Arelene
Rinaldi is available in 10 languages (http://www.fau.edu/netiquette.net/index.html)
Special Needs
Certain groups of individuals have special
needs and hence pose particular concerns for online education. This includes
young children, senior citizens, and handicapped individuals.
EXAMPLE:Project EASI (http://www.rit.edu/~easi)
provides guidelines for development of online materials for individuals with
disabilities.
EXAMPLES:The Center for Applied Special Technology (http://www.cast.org ) and WebABLE (http://www.webable.com) provide access to
resources for the use of technology by disabled individuals.
Gender Equity
Another important social/cultural aspect of
technology use is the inequity between males and females in computer
activities. Beginning in the early grades of school and continuing through
college and employment, relatively few females are attracted to computer
technology, making it a male-dominated environment. Efforts are being made at
all levels of education and training to rectify this situation.
EXAMPLES: The GIRLTECH site created by Cynthia Lanius of Rice
University (
http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/club/girls.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norman Coombs - Adaptive technology for
online communication
Norm Coombs is a professor of history at
Rochester Institute of Technology and a pioneer in online education. As a blind
person, he makes extensive use of adaptive technology to teach. Interestingly,
his interaction with deaf students in classes provided him with an initial
understanding of how online interaction could provide new learning
opportunities. He has been the chair of the EASI project and involved in many
efforts concerned with access for those with disabilities. He was also named
New York Professor of the Year in 1998.
To learn more about his background and work,
see his home page at http://www.rit.edu/~nrcgsh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interactivity and Participation
The most important role of the instructor in
online classes is to ensure that there is a high degree of interactivity and
participation. This means designing and conducting learning activities that
result in engagement with the subject matter and fellow students. As discussed
in the previous chapter, coursework should focus on assignments and projects
that are relevant and realistic in nature. It should involve plenty of
opportunities for input from the instructor and fellow students.
EXAMPLE:The World Lecture Hall is worldwide database of online
courses at the college level. (http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/index.html)
One factor that strongly affects the amount
of student interaction and participation is the level of instructor
involvement. If the instructor regularly posts messages in the discussion forum
or provides comments to students via email, this increases student involvement
and participation in a course. So a cardinal rule of good online teaching is
that the instructor must participate a lot to get students to do likewise.
EXAMPLE:The Awesome Library for Teachers developed by Jerry
Adams is one of many online curriculum databases available for K-12 teachers. (http://www.awesomelibrary.org)
EXAMPLE:Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators is another
excellent source of curriculum and other teacher resources (
http://discoveryschool.com/schrockguide)
Feedback
A primary task of the teacher is provide
feedback. In online courses, teacher feedback will mostly take the form of
email messages about assignments or comments made on the assignment and
returned to the student. The latter will usually involve marking up the
original file submitted by the student and having them download it to see the
comments. Ideally individual feedback is provided to each student, as well as
group feedback. Group feedback can take the form of messages posted in a
discussion forum or conference which summarize/synthesize the individual
responses made on a given topic or activity.
EXAMPLE:The Training & Development Community Center is an
example of a resource for those interested in the training world. (http://tcm.com/trdev)
Workload
One of the implications of making a course
highly interactive and providing good feedback to students is that it creates a
high workload for instructors. As a rule of thumb, the higher the level of
interactivity and participation in a course, the more work involved for the
teacher. Online teachers (and institutions) need to develop strategies to
successfully manage this increased workload.
EXAMPLE:Teachers Helping Teachers site developed by Scott
Mandel (http://www.pacificnet.net/~mandel)
Moderating and facilitating
It has been mentioned previously in this
chapter and earlier in the book that online teaching requires good moderating
and facilitation skills. Moderating involves encouraging students to
participate in discussion forums and conferences, ensuring that certain
students don't dominate, keeping discussions focused on the topic at hand, and
summarizing/ synthesizing the highlights of discussions. Facilitation means
providing information that will help students complete their assignments,
suggesting ideas or strategies for them to pursue in their course work, and
getting students to reflect on their responses and work.
A source of further information about the
nature of moderating online courses can be found at the Moderators Home Page, http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderators.html#mod.
EXAMPLE:Ed's Oasis provides a variety of useful resources for
teachers (http://www.edsoasis.org)
Effectiveness
There are many factors which determine the
effectiveness of online teaching. Experience and comfort with online teaching
is one of the most obvious. This includes general familiarity with the nature
and techniques of online teaching as well as mastery of the particular system
and software used in a given course.
EXAMPLE:The Searle Center for Teaching Excellence at NWU is
one of many teaching effectiveness centers around the country. (http://president.scfte.nwu.edu)
Faculty collaboration
Just as online courses offer many
opportunities for student interaction, they also provide many possibilities for
collaboration among teachers. While teachers usually like to collaborate, it is
often difficult to do so in a conventional classroom setting. However, an
online class makes it quite easy to do so.
EXAMPLE:There are many associations and organizations
concerned with online education such as EDUCAUSE (http://www.educause.edu)
Student Evaluation
One aspect of online teaching which often
generates considerable concern for teachers is evaluation of student
performance. They worry that they will not be able to assess student
understanding or participation properly. Ironically, student evaluation can be
done far more effectively online than in a traditional classroom setting because
of the ease of creating online tests and other forms of assessment.
EXAMPLE:The Educational Testing Service is a good site to
research issues concerning student evaluation (http://www.ets.org)
EXAMPLE:Test.com provides access to a large collection of
online tests (http://www.test.com
)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Betty Collis: A World Perspective on
TeleLearning
Although she began her career as a
mathematics teacher in the U.S., Betty Collis has been a professor for many
years in the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Technology at the University
of Twente in the Netherlands. She has been involved in numerous projects to
assess the effectiveness of computers in European school systems as well as
research studies of online learning. Recently she has been involved in a
project to implement an online education system at the University of Twente
called Teletop (http://teletop.edte.utwente.nl).
She has written many publications including the comprehensive textbook TeleLearning
in the Digital World.
To learn more about her work, see http://www.to.utwente.nl/user/ism/collis/home.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7/ Design &
Development of Online Courses
Development methodology
Over the years, methods for the development
of instruction have been explored and refined. The most widely adopted
methodology is the Instructional Systems Development (ISD) model. While the ISD
model has many variations, it basically suggests that an instructional
development project be divided up into 5 major stages: analysis, design,
production, implementation, and evaluation.
EXAMPLE:Big Dog's ISD page is a online guide to ISD developed
by Don Clark.(http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat.html)
An alternative development methodology is
minimalism which originates from the computer and technical publications world
rather than training. Minimalism is based more on the iterative design approach
commonly used in the computer field which involves the development of
prototypes.
EXAMPLE: The NODE site provides resources for instructional
design related to online courses (
http://node.on.ca/tfl/design )
Form and function
Development methodologies such as ISD and
minimalism provide a series of principles based upon instructional. However,
the creation of online courses involves at least two other categories of design
principles: usability (function) and aesthetics (form).
EXAMPLE:There are a number of style guides available for the
design of web pages/sites such at the one developed by the Center For Advanced
Instructional Media at Yale University (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html)
Good design involves achieving a balance
between usability and aesthetics. You want a program that is easy to use, but
is also visually interesting and highly motivating. This is a very difficult
combination to achieve which is one reason why there are relatively few
outstanding programs.
The team approach
One of the most different aspects about
developing online course materials relative to traditional print materials
(e.g., textbooks, lecture notes) is the need for a team approach. It is
difficult for a single individual to have the range of skills and time required
to develop online courses.
EXAMPLE:There a number of research labs around the country
that study computer usability such as HCIL at the University of Maryland (http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hcil)
Course documents
There are a number of documents that can be
used to organize and structure a course. The most common of these is a syllabus
which includes course goals and objectives, discussion of pre-requisites, an
outline of class activities and schedule, a description of course grading and
evaluation methods, a list of texts or readings, and a bibliography.
A second important document is the lesson
plan which describes how a teacher plans to conduct a class. The lesson plan is
similar in nature to a syllabus with description of goals and objectives,
pre-requisites, class activities, and evaluation methods. However, lesson plans
are usually more detailed in terms of class activities, identifying specific
actions to be performed by the teacher, including preparation steps.
EXAMPLE:An example of a lesson plan from the Lesson Plan
Exchange of the Engaging Science site (http://www.engagingscience.org/lpe/lpe.htm)
A third important course document is a study
guide. The study guide is intended to help students understand the course
content better and usually provides additional explanations and examples of the
subject matter.
EXAMPLE:The IMS project is an attempt to develop an
international specification and database for online courses (http://www.imsproject.org)
Integrating online and on-campus
activities
As a general rule, most online courses and
programs will involve some on-campus activities. These activities may include
orientation sessions, hands-on labs, examinations, lectures, or discussion
groups. A typical arrangement is for students to attend an on-campus session
once at the beginning of the semester, another at a mid-point, and a third at
the end of the course (which may involve taking an exam). Many graduate
programs often only have one on-campus session at the beginning of each
semester (i.e., three per year) or just an annual session in the summer lasting
a week in duration. The frequency of on-campus sessions will be dictated by the
nature of the curriculum (i.e., need for hands-on or in-person interaction) and
by the level of education. It has been well-established that graduate students need
relatively little in-person interaction, but younger students (especially k-12)
may require more.
EXAMPLE:One of the issues that become important when
integrating on-campus and online activities is electronic classrooms (see http://classrooms.com)
EXAMPLE:Online Class has developed a model that integrates
online and classroom activities at the K-12 level (http://www.onlineclass.com)
Authoring Courses
At the end of chapter 3, we briefly discussed
authoring tools for creating online courses. The most commonly used authoring
tool for most teachers will be a word processing program given that the primary
course documents (i.e., syllabi, lesson plans, study guides) are text files.
Since the current versions of all word processing programs allow documents to
be saved in HTML format, creating web documents does not require any special
effort. Of course, if these documents are to involve graphics, photographs, or
slideshows, additional software tools will be required, but these are standard
applications programs that any computer user can be expected to learn to use.
If the institution provides instructional support services, such additional
components may be created by graphics designers or multimedia specialists on
behalf of the instructor.
An interesting new development in the world
of web-based learning is the idea of shared resources. The Educational Object
Exchange site (http://www.eoe.org) is
resource for sharing Java applets and assisting others to develop their own
object exchange communities.
For an analysis of the design of web-based
courses, see http://snow.utoronto.ca/best/crsreview.html
EXAMPLE:Almost everything a teacher needs or wants to know
about creating web sites can be found online. The WebTeacher site is an
introduction to the web (http://www.webteacher.org)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judi Harris - Telementoring
Judi Harris is a professor in the College of
Education at the University of Texas, Austin. Her focus is on teaching teachers
how to use the internet in the classroom and she has written a number of
guidebooks on this topic published by ITSE and ASCD. She also directs the
"Electronic Emissary" project, an effort to connect students and
subject matter experts via the internet. She considers this project to be an
example of telementoring,.
For more about Judi Harris, see http://www.edb.utexas.edu/coe/depts/ci/it/harris.html
The home page for the Electronic Emissary
project is: http://www.tapr.org/emissary/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8/ Organizations and
Networking
Physical facilities
In order to participate in online activities,
all students and staff need easy access to networked computers. For on-campus
access, this normally means computers in offices and labs connected to LANs which
in turn have a high speed connection to the internet (e.g., a T1 line). In
addition, machines in dormitories, libraries, and classrooms will also need to
connect to the LAN (or have their own LANs). Creating this kind of on-campus
network means that each machine must have an appropriate LAN interface card,
the necessary cable is run through buildings, and the LAN server has a suitable
modem to connect to a high speed line. Plus all machines will need software for
the LAN and internet configurations. And there will be printers and various
storage devices connected to different machines in the network. Multimedia adds
further.
EXAMPLE:In many cases, networking vendors are the best source
of up-to-date technical information, e.g., the 3Com site (http://www.3com.com/edu)
Use of a network tends to raise additional
computing issues such as security, virus protection, backups, and file sharing.
EXAMPLE:Some vendors offer complete educational network
solutions, reducing the level of technical expertise required by schools, e.g.,
NetSchools (http://www.netschools.net).
Installing and supporting all of these
network facilities takes considerable staff and money. In the case of small school
systems, the lack of both can present major obstacles to networking. The costs
of multiple phone lines is a big problem for some school systems. In 1996, the
U.S. Congress passed the Telecommunications Act which includes a subsidy
program (the "E-rate") which is supposed to reduce the cost of
telecommunications services to schools; however this subsidy has had little
practical effort to date (see http://www.slcfund.org).
Patterns of study and work
Online education provides a lot of
flexibility in terms of where and when people work, especially if asynchronous
interaction is involved. In the case of students, studying and class
participation can be done at home in the evenings or weekends. Similarly,
faculty do not need to be on-campus to do their teaching -- they can do it from
home according to their own work schedule. It is also possible for people to
study or work while they are traveling, confined to a hospital, or even on
vacation -- provided they have a computer and access to a phone line.
EXAMPLE:Finding a good Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a
critical aspect of online education. The List site helps do this (http://www.thelist.com)
However, one weak area for online interaction
is supervision and management. Most individuals who have supervisory or
management responsibilities over others (e.g., deans, department heads,
principals, thesis advisors, etc.) are not comfortable conducting such
activities entirely in electronic form. While it is very easy to track the work
of someone via online means (e.g., logon records, file or screen sharing), it
is usually considered difficult to solve disputes or conflicts this way. Most
people prefer to handle these aspects of supervision and management via
in-person meetings. It is also difficult to get an overall picture of a
person's progress or state of being solely from online interaction.
Consequently, most supervisors and managers like to have periodic in-person
meetings with their staff, even though most of the actual work can be done
online.
EXAMPLE:Creating a online campus involves defining how
students, faculty and administrative staff will interact. Embanet is an example
of a commercial service that provides online learning environments (http://www.embanet.com)
Power relationships
One of the aspects of organizations that
online interaction changes considerably is the relationships of authority and
power (see Davenport, 1997; Kling & Dunlop, 1996; Sproull & Kiesler,
1991). When information is communicated through a physical means (including
telephone and fax), lines of authority can be maintained through gate-keepers
(i.e., secretaries and assistants). However, online interaction via email and
conferencing tends to override these channels, allowing anyone to contact
anyone else.
EXAMPLE:Many publishing and media organizations are using
online learning to extend their markets. The PBS TeacherSource site links
public television with the classroom (http://www.pbs.org)
Cooperation and competition
One of the most intriguing aspects of online
education is how it affects the relationships among institutions, in terms of
cooperation and competition. Just as networking can facilitate collaboration
among students or faculty, it can also do so at the institutional level. The
most obvious form of collaboration is course sharing in which a group of
institutions agree to jointly offer online courses to their respective student
populations. Many groups of institutions have formed consortiums as the
administrative framework for these offerings. Examples include the Western
Governors University http://www.wgu.edu), the
California Virtual University (http://www.california.edu),
and the Southern Regional Electronic Campus (http://www.srec.sreb.org).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Rogers: Linking Kids Around the World!
Al Rogers is a former classroom teacher who
has played a prominent role in getting students online around the world. Along
with his collaborator, Yvonne Marie Andres, he developed FrEdMail (and the
FrEdWriter program) which provided a low-cost email system for schools.
Currently he is the executive director of the Global SchoolNet Foundation (http://www.gsn.org) which supports a number of
projects for online interaction among schools and students in many different
nations. You can out more about Al Rogers at http://www.gsn.org/who/team/ar.bio.html.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ownership
In theory, questions of ownership (which
include copyright, royalties and licensing) are no different for online
materials than any other media. Educational institutions usually specify in
their employment contracts that all instructional materials developed by
faculty or staff are the exclusive property of the institution. Copyright law
clearly spells out the rules of ownership for works in electronic form. And
today's publishing contracts normally outline in extraordinary detail, the terms
for royalties and licensing of all materials, including electronic versions.
But online courses raise questions of ownership which are difficult to answer.
EXAMPLE:The copyright website. (http://www.benedict.com)
Quality Control
One of the concerns that it shared by most
faculty and administrators (as well as the public) about online courses is
whether the quality of education is par with traditional on-campus classes. In
Chapter 4, we reviewed some of the research on the effectiveness of online
courses which suggests that they can be just as effective, or more so, in terms
of learning outcomes. But, that research doesn't address the question of
whether a given course is good. Educational institutions need to develop
quality control procedures that ensure the effectiveness of all online courses
they offer.
EXAMPLE:The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an
organization dedicated to the examination of network policy issues (http://www.eff.org).
EXAMPLE:The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education
(WICHE) is a regional organization that focuses on policy issues for higher
education (http://www.wiche.edu)
Student/Faculty workloads
One of the data items that can be collected
as part of the quality control process is how much time students spend studying
and how much time faculty spend teaching. This data is very important with
online courses for a number of reasons. For one thing, there are expectations
on the part of schools (and accrediting bodies) about how many hours of study
are required to complete a course for a certain number of credits. Almost any
online system can produce records of student sign-on time as well as what they
did while they were signed on (e.g., number and type of responses). To the
extent that students send email, participate in conferences, and post messages
in discussion forums, all of these activities can be tabulated or kept as
records of student performance. Of course, this data doesn't indicate that
learning is taking place any more than when a student is occupying a seat in a
classroom.
EXAMPLE:The Consortium for Policy Research in Education. (http://www.upenn.edu/gse/cpre/)
While it possible that the student workload
in an online course is too light for the designated credit hours, in most cases
it is too heavy. Teachers are inclined to give assignments involving online
collaboration, research or writing that are very time consuming, without
realizing how long it takes to complete these assignments.
EXAMPLE:The Education Commission of the States (ECS)
coordinates educational policy nationally (http://www.ecs.org).
Accreditation and certification
Some of the issues we have been discussing in
preceding sections provide the background to questions about the accreditation
of online programs and the certification of those who teach online. Given the
common concern with the quality of online courses, it is no surprise that the
credentials of those who teach and the institutions that offer such courses is
subjected to additional scrutiny. Likewise, to the extent that course workloads
are related to credits and learning outcomes, there is a connection between
accreditation and the nature of online courses.
EXAMPLE: The American Council for Education provides
accreditation guidelines for post-secondary learning
EXAMPLE:The EdWeb site created by Andy Carvin discusses the
policy implications of online education (http://edweb.gsn.org)
Acceptable use
One of the most complex issues associated
with the internet and computer networks is acceptable use -- regulating what is
acceptable online behavior. Acceptable use covers what kind of information can
be accessed and stored online, and by whom. It also covers how online
facilities are used. Almost every educational institution has its own acceptable
use policy which all students are expected to abide by, with penalties for
violations.
EXAMPLE:Handbook for Acceptable Use Policies; the Virginia
Dept Education ( www.pen.k12.va.us/go/DOE/Technolgy/AUP/home.shtml
)
EXAMPLE:The SafeKids web site provides guidance on how to
ensure a wholesome online experience for children (http://www.safekids.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Ohler - Exploring the Electronic
Frontier
Jason Ohler is Director of Educational
Technology for the University of Alaska and a long-time advocate of online
education. His efforts focus on the creative, effective and responsible use of
technology in education. He is was the founder of one of the first online
journals about distance education (The Online Chronicle of Distance Education
and Communication) and the author of Thinking About Technology (http://ivaldi.jun.alaska.edu/edtech/tat/cover/covfram.html).
He is also a musician and composer with interests in computer-based music.
See his home page at http://www2.jun.alaska.edu/edtech/jason
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10/ Education in the Information Age
Access: The haves and have-nots
Throughout this book we have stressed the
fact that online education only works if students and teachers have easy and
regular access to computers with network connections. As a general rule, this
is not a problem in the relatively affluent suburban areas of developed
countries. However, it is a different situation in the poor urban and rural
areas of the world (including the USA). In these settings, there may be few
computers and very limited or no network connections. For such students and
teachers, online education is not a possibility at the current time.
EXAMPLE:The Rural Education Activities Programme (REAP) in New
Zealand is an effort to ensure that individuals in rural areas have online
access (http://reap.org.nz)
Technology: good or evil?
A general debate rages over the immediate and
long-term desirability of technology: the technophiles versus the technophobes.
Many have argued that our increasing reliance on technology is a fatal flaw and
will ultimately lead to the demise of society; others feel that it is the road
to utopia. Most people accept it at face value and see neither Armageddon nor
utopian implications. The critical question is whether technology is inherently
good or evil -- or whether it simply reflects the characteristics of the
individuals or groups that use it.
EXAMPLE:Is technology inherently good or evil? The U.S.
Holocaust Museum. (http://www.ushmm.org)
Privacy
A more serious issue of individual freedom is
privacy in online environments. We have mentioned in earlier chapters, that is
is easy to capture the full details of what a student does while signed on,
usually for the legitimate purpose of tracking student performance or providing
assistance during learning activities. However, users may not be informed or
aware of this automatic data recording -- or able to do anything about it. For
example, it is common for schools systems to monitor all online transactions
occurring in computer labs watching for violations of acceptable use policies
(e.g., accessing pornography, spamming, or hacking attempts). Such monitoring
can include reading private email messages.
EXAMPLE:The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is a
good resource for information about online privacy issues (http://epic.org)
Cost/Benefits
While the benefits of online education have
been alluded to from time to time in this book, there has been no discussion of
the cost/benefits. The primary benefit of online courses is that the effort to
develop and deliver them can be distributed over a large student audience,
resulting in economies of scale for educational institutions. In the case of
higher education and private companies, larger student enrollments means more
tuition revenue. For public schools and training organizations, larger
enrollments lowers the per student cost (and may mean larger subsidies or
budgets). From the student's perspective, the availability of many online
courses from different institutions means a variety of choices in terms of
subject matter, instructors, media alternatives, and pricing.
EXAMPLE:The National Center for Technology Planning founded by
Larry Anderson is helpful in determining what resources will be needed for
educational networks. (http://www.nctm.com )
A major economic consequence of online
education is that it has created new market opportunities for computer and
telecommunication companies, not just in hardware or software, but services as
well. The web has spawned a tremendous range of new educational ventures from
course delivery tools to test preparation companies. Perhaps the most
interesting new entities are the many for-profit "virtual schools".
At the present time these organizations are not much more than online versions
of the classic "home study" companies. However this is likely to
change in the near future.
Virtual Schools
Online education allows for new forms of
institutions to evolve from those that currently exist or develop from scratch.
For example, there is no reason why a group of experts in a given subject area
can't start their own online "institute" which offers courses or
seminars and even confers degrees or certificates. To be meaningful, such a
virtual school would want to be accredited and would need to go through the
accreditation process. While accreditation as it currently exists is intended
for large institutions, it could be changed to fit smaller entities. If a
virtual school offered courses on topics in high demand (e.g., new areas of
science, medicine, or technology) from very credible teachers, they could be
quite successful.
EXAMPLE:The Ziff-Davis University (ZDU), a virtual school
created by a media company. Tuition is a small monthly cost (http://www.zdu.com)
Resistance to Change
Because online education entails major
changes in the way education is designed and delivered, it creates a great deal
of resistance among individuals and organizations. The reasons for resistance
to change are varied: fear of the unknown, additional effort required to learn
new things, loss of power/prestige due to changed roles, or disagreement about
new ideas. Given that online learning and teaching is so different from
traditional classroom instruction, it is very likely that some faculty, students
and administrators will object strongly.
(See for example, the article "Digital
Diploma Mills" by David Noble at http://firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html
).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curtis Bonk: Electronic
collaboration
Curtis Bonk is an associate professor in the
School of Education at the University of Indiana and a member of the Center for
Research on Learning and Technology. He is the developer of
"smartweb", an online environment for mentoring undergraduate
educational psychology students as well as other tools for web-based learning.
He is the co-editor of the book Electronic Collaborators: Learner-centered
technologies for literacy, apprenticeship and discourse published in 1998
by Erlbaum. He has recently proposed a 10 level model for online learning.
To learn more about his work, see http://php.indiana.edu/~cjbonk
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/ When the Electrons
Hit the Screen
Putting together an online course
Many instructors, schools and organizations
are just getting started with online education. In chapter 7, we discussed some
of the issues associated with the design and development of online courses.
There are also quite a number of practical considerations to be addressed.
First, it is a lot easier to convert an
existing class into online form than develop something brand new. With a new
course, both the curriculum (content) and the delivery format (online
teaching/learning) have to be debugged simultaneously.
Indeed, the starting point for creating an
online course (beyond goals/objectives) is the definition of student
assignments/exercises. The nature of the assignments will determine the level
of interactivity and participation in a course.
Another decision to be made is the extent to
which students will work individually or in-groups. Students may work together
on major projects, but do weekly assignments by themselves.
EXAMPLE: Many colleges and universities have excellent faculty
development programs which provide support for development of online courses,
e.g., the Hawaii Community College system (http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/index.htm)
One last piece of advice about creating a
first course is to begin with a pilot or prototype. Before a lot of effort is
expended in the design and development of the full course, it is highly
desirable to make up a sample lesson or two and try it out with a small number
of representative students.
EXAMPLE: The tech-learning site is a source for online teaching
ideas as well as software reviews
Getting connected
As has been mentioned many times earlier in
this book, online education only works if everyone involved (i.e., students,
faculty, and administrative staff) has regular access to computers and
networks.
Access problems need to be solved at two
basic levels: individuals and institutional. At the individual level, students
and employees need to have their own personal network accounts as provided by
an ISP.
EXAMPLE:All technology vendors offer online support for their
products and this can be a useful resource when troubleshooting network
problems e.g., Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com/service/online)
Getting connected at the institutional level
is a much more complex endeavor. The kind of network connections appropriates
for a given school or organization is dependent upon its size (i.e., number of
students/employees/customers) and the nature of the online applications.
EXAMPLE: Many states have created extensive online resources
for their school systems including information about training and funding for
technology, e.g., the Link 2 Learn network in Pennsylvania (http://l2l.org/index.html)
Finding money and resources
Most institutions and organizations recognize
network costs as a regular budget item and plan accordingly. However, many
schools find it difficult to squeeze any more money out of their existing
budgets for technology (or anything else) and require external assistance in
the form of grants or donations. Some schools have established partnerships
with technology or telecommunications vendors who donate equipment and support
services. Other schools have reached out for state or federal money, or in the
case of colleges and universities, private donations.
EXAMPLE: The Pitsco web site includes a very comprehensive
guide to funding resources as well as information about many of the topics
covered in earlier chapters
Selecting software
Software selection is a decision process that
goes on at all levels of online education. Students need to make decisions
about what application and browser software they will use (although Microsoft
tries to keep the options limited to their products). Instructors and course
developers make decisions about which online applications and authoring
environments they will use (chapters 3 and 7). Network administrations make
decisions about what online environments will be implemented and supported as
well as the server and telecommunications software to be used. All of these
software decisions have financial and instructional implications.
EXAMPLE: There are many sources of product reviews which can be
useful in selecting software. The Benchin web site features user reviews
Troubleshooting
A general skill required by all computer
users is troubleshooting, i.e., being able to figure why something isn't
working and fix it. This skill is especially important for online activities
because they tend to be fairly complicated applications. On the other hand,
modern network software including browsers and learning environments tends to
make it relatively easy to accomplish tasks. But things do go wrong, and
frequently.
The importance of good troubleshooting
procedures in online education cannot be over-emphasized. Students (as well as
faculty) are often isolated and with no local resources or support. They are
dependent upon the support provided remotely to address and solve their
problems. If problems are not solved promptly, they impede learning progress
and quickly wear down the motivation to continue learning. Ultimately, the
troubleshooting effectiveness of a program will affect the success of its
online courses.
EXAMPLE: The THE Journal Online web site not only contains
articles about technology applications but also provides their roadmap to the
internet
What to do next
This chapter has touched upon only a few of
the practical matters that educators will encounter as they implement online
education. Anyone embarking on the design or delivery of an online course,
whether a teacher, administrator, or instructional developer, should do a
number of things: (1) search the web for existing online courses that involve
similar content, students, tools, or objectives and study them, (2) talk to
others in your institution or elsewhere who have done what you plan to do, (3)
take an online course if you have no first-hand experience with this form of
learning, (4) put together a team for course development and support, and (5)
ensure that your institution or organization is ready for online education. One
of the easiest ways to avail yourself of information and ideas about online
education (apart from web browsing) is to attend a conference of any
organization devoted to educational technology (see chapter 13) or
education/training in a given domain. This will provide an opportunity to learn
from the experience of others, see demonstrations of software and systems, and
determine the current trends.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mariano Bernardez - Online professional
development
Mariano Bernardez is a well-known training
consultant who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1998, he founded the
Performance Improvement Global Network (PIGN) chapter of the organization ISPI
(http://www.pignc-ispi.com). PIGN is
one of the first virtual (and bilingual) chapters of a professional
association. It provides a variety of information resources and discussion
opportunities to members of ISPI and the training community -- as well as a
nice demonstration of how networks can link up two continents.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ubiquitous Computing
One technology development that seems easy to
predict is the increasing prevalence of microprocessors in all objects - making
them "smart". We have become used to having computers in devices like
cars and coffee-makers, but many believe this is just the beginning.
A key element to ubiquitous computing is
wireless networking. We already have simple forms of this - the use of infrared
connections in LAN settings and radio frequency (e.g., cellular) in WANs.
However, current forms of wireless networks are less dependable and more
expensive than direct (wired) connection at present. With the advent of
satellite-based cellular services, this is likely to change for the WAN
environment. But the kind of ubiquitous computing envisioned by many will
require much more robust forms of wireless networking than is available now.
EXAMPLE:Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is one of the
most influential R&D labs in the computing field having made significant
contributions to the nature of personal computers and networking. (http://www.parc.xerox.com).
Intelligent Software
Correlated with the emergence of ubiquitous
computing is the development of intelligent software - programs capable of
making autonomous decisions based upon the input received or what they sense
about the state of the environment. In the case of ubiquitous computing, these
decisions are most likely to be about personal preferences or routine
procedures, e.g., turning on lights and setting them to appropriate levels or
logging on to a network and checking email automatically when you enter your
office. While such actions are relatively mundane, they represent small
decisions that people don't have to be bothered with and are relatively easy
and safe for computers to carry out.
EXAMPLE:The Research division of IBM Corp. is another very
influential R&D lab in the computing world, especially in terms of new
hardware developments.(http://www.research.ibm.com)
EXAMPLE:Bell Labs, a component of Lucent Technologies, is the
premier R&D lab for new developments in telecommunications technology (http://www.bell-labs.com)
Merging of television, telecommunications
and computing
A long predicted development which we are
just beginning to see occur, is the merging of the television, telecommunications
and computing worlds. This has been most clearly demonstrated by the appearance
of Web-TV, the ability to access the web via a specially equipped television,
through the services of television cable/satellite providers. Moving television
content, such as movies, home shopping, or talk shows to the web (using digital
video) is the commercial force underlying this development. Media companies
believe that they can make more money if they are able to deliver personalized
content to homes, especially in an interactive context where orders can be
placed or people can actively participate in programming.
EXAMPLE:The CNN Student News Bureau allows students to
correspondents to the CNN NEWSROOM, a news service for classroom use. (http://learning.turner.com/SB)
Virtual environments
In chapter 3 we briefly discussed the value
of simulation as an instructional methodology. An even more worthwhile version
of simulation is virtual reality - which is basically 3-D simulation with
sensory-motor input and output. In a virtual environment, students have
realistic learning experiences that include the ability to manipulate objects
or navigate around 3-D representations of actual or imagined worlds. An obvious
application for virtual reality are science or medical labs that involve
working with simulated equipment or biological entities. More intriguing are
virtual worlds for mathematics, astronomy or geology that involve visual
representations of abstract concepts. It is also likely that virtual reality
will be used extensively for the humanities and fine arts where it can extend
traditional modalities of expression.
EXAMPLE:The Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Michigan
is one of a number of R&D facilities around the world that is exploring
this technology. (http://www-VRL.umich.edu)
For more discussion about virtual reality and
its application in schools, see the VR & Schools newsletter at http://eastnet.educ.ecu.edu/vr/pub.htm
Speech processing
One of assumptions made by many science
fiction writers and those who write future computing scenarios is that people
will interact with computers primarily via speech. Speech input and output is
seen as more natural form of interaction than the use of keyboards and mice.
Since it allows "hands-free" interaction, it fits in with ubiquitous
computing devices which might be worn as jewelry (the proverbial "Dick
Tracy" wristwatch) or embedded in furniture/furnishings.
Speech processing does have many potential
educational benefits. Language learning programs have made good use of existing
synthesis/recognition capabilities to allow students to listen to and practice
pronunciations. Speech input and output is also very useful with young children
when they are learning to speak and read. In certain training settings, speech
processing capabilities are an important part of simulations, such as air
traffic control or emergency services. And, text to speech conversion programs
are a critical component for blind computer users. There are probably many
educational applications that would be enhanced through the use of speech
input/output.
To learn more about speech technology and
research, see the "Speech" site at Carnegie-Mellon University (http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/speech)
which also provides links to many other relevant sites.
Automated language translation
One of the exciting aspects of global
networking is that it allows people from all nations to interact easily. This
is especially true in the case of online education where courses can involve
participates from anywhere in the world. However, people speak different
languages which makes communication difficult. This problem is likely to get
worse as more people get online. The ideal solution is automatic translation
programs that will convert text from one language to another.
EXAMPLE:The AltaVista system provides an automated translation
capability (http://www.altavista.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Levinson: Information Technology
Visionary
Paul Levinson is the founder and president of
Connected Education Inc., an organization that has provided online courses in
conjunction with major universities since 1985. He is the author of many books
and articles about electronic communications including "Digital McLuhan: A
Guide to the Information Millennium" published in 1999 by Routledge, and
the editor of the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems. Levinson is also
a noted science fiction writer.
To learn more, see http://www.sfwa.org/members/Levinson
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowledge management
One of the most important developments in the
training domain in the past decade has been the emphasis on organizational
rather than individual learning. The idea underlying organizational learning is
to develop methods to foster the sharing and accumulation of knowledge within
an organization. This involves capturing the expertise of employees and putting
it in a form that is easily available to everyone else (present and future) who
wants to access that expertise. This is most easily accomplished via computer
databases and networks. The creation of such databases and networks has come to
be called knowledge management.
EXAMPLE:Major consulting firms such as Andersen Consulting are
good sources of information about emerging technology and its impact on
business. (http://www.ac.com)
EXAMPLE:While not specifically concerned with technology, the
Institute for the Future is a well-known "think tank" that makes
forecasts about emerging trends and developments in society. (http://www.iftf.org)
A good source for further information
about knowledge management is the Biz Tech web site at http://www.brint.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organizations that shape online education
Many organizations shape current and future
developments in the field of online computing. This includes technology
companies who develop hardware and software products that enable new networking
capabilities. It also includes R&D centers, as well as the funding agencies
and foundations that make it possible for R&D to be conducted. Finally,
certain schools, associations, and companies can strongly influence the
direction of online computing by the nature of their projects, programs or
products. In this section we mention some organizations (in no particular
order) that stand out in terms of their contributions.
-International Society for Technology in
Education (ISTE) - provides conferences and publications for teachers about
online education (http://www.iste.org)
-Technical Education Research Center (TERC)
has
been conducting research projects that focus
on the use of technology in math and science education since 1965. In recent
years, TERC has spearheaded a number of major online projects including Kids
Network (done in conjunction with the National Geographic Society) and
GlobalLab. (http://www.terc.edu)
-The MIT Media Lab. While not specifically
concerned with education or networking, the demonstration projects and
prototypes developed here strongly influence the entire technology world,
especially in terms of multimedia capabilities. (http://www.media.mit.edu)
-NASA. While many government agencies have
done an excellent job providing online access to their resources, NASA has been
the leader in terms of working with schools and creating worthwhile learning
programs. It also helps that their subject matter is exciting and fascinating
to kids and adults alike. (http://www.nasa.gov)
-Pacific Bell - Knowledge Network. While many
of the telecommunications companies have become heavily involved in school
networking, Pacific Bell was one of the first to provide substantial funds
($100 million) and broad support for online education with its "Education
First initiative and Knowledge Network web site. (http://www.kn.pacbell.com)
-The British Open University. Not only is this
the worlds largest and most successful distance learning institution, but it
also make extensive use of online education. The OU also hosts a number of
advanced research groups such as the Knowledge Media Institute. (http://www.open.ac.uk)
-The National Center for Supercomputer
Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. One of the nations leading
research centers for high performance computing and networking. This is where
the original web browser (Mosaic) was developed (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu)
-Although not as large as some other computer
companies, Hewlett-Packard has always exerted a significant impact on the
evolution of computing and its development in education (especially on the west
coast). Their Test & measurement Educator's Corner web site allows
engineering students to use virtual test and measurement equipment. ( http://www.tmo.hp.com/tmo/iia/edcorner/English/product_main.html
)
-The National Institute of Health (NIH) has
been a leader in providing online access to medical information, beginning with
its Medline database in the 1960s. This web page shows their Office of Science
Education which provides curriculum support materials for high school science.
(http://science-education.nih.gov)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
13/ Sources of Further Information
Online Journals/Magazines
There are many online journals and magazines
that address technology in education such as:
The Wellspring - An online community of
distance educators: http://wellspring.isinj.com
CMC Magazine: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/current/toc.html
Networking - Online newsletter of the NODE
program: http://node.on.ca/networking
From Now On: http://fromnowon.org:
J. of Asynchronous Learning Networks: http://www.aln.org/alnweb
J. of Interactive Multimedia in Education : http://www-jime.open.ac.uk
J. of Interactive Learning Research: http://www.aace.org
J. of Instructional Science &
Technolology : http://www.usq.edu.au/electpub/e-jist/homepage.htm
J. of Technology Education : http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte.html
New Horizons for Learning: http://www.newhorizons.org/
Online Educator: http://ole.net:8081/educator
Technology Source : http://horizon.unc.edu/TS
THE Journal: http://www.thejournal.com
Multimedia Schools: http://www.infotoday.com/MMschools/default.htm
First Monday: http://firstmonday.com
Conference/Workshops
A number of organizations provide their
conference or workshop papers online:
AusWeb 97: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/ausweb97.htm
NAU Web 98: http://star.ucc.nau.edu/~nauweb98
NSF Future of Networking Technologies for
Learning (Nov 1995): http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures
Teaching at Community Colleges Online (TCC
98): http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcon98/papers.html
Associations
The following organizations have something to
do with education, training and technology:
Association for the Advancement of Computers
in Education (AACE):
American Society for Training &
Development (ASTD): http://www.astd.org
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development (ASCD): http://www.ascd.org
Distance Education Training Council (DETC): http://www.detc.org
Computer Using Educators (CUE): http://www.cue.org
EduCause: http://www.educause.edu
International Society for Technology in
Education (ISTE): http://www.iste.org
International Technology Education
Association (ITEA): http://www.iteawww.org
International Teleconferencing Association
(ITCA): http://www.itca.org/
National Education Association (NEA): http://www.nea.org
National Science Teachers Association (NSTA):
http://www.nsta.org/
Society for Applied Learning and Technology
(SALT): http://www.salt.org
U.S. Distance Learning Association (USDLA): http://www.usdla.org
Collections/Archives:
Some collections of articles or project
archives about online education:
Global School Net: http://www.gsn.org/teach/articles
MCCCD Learning Communities: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/monograph/index.html
MCREL Technology Integration: http://www.mcrel.org/resources/technology/index.asp
Living Schoolbook Project: http://lsb.syr.edu
U.S. Department of Education, Office of
Technology: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/pubsh.html
Research Centers
There are a number of research centers that
focus on different aspects of educational technology:
Knowledge Media Institute, Open University: http://kmi.open.ac.uk
Institute for Computer Based Learning,
Heriot-Watt Unversity: http://www.icbl.hw..ac.uk
Institute for Learning Sciences, Northwestern
University: http://www.ils.nwu.edu
Institute for Learning Technologies, Columbia
University: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu
National Center for Supercomputer
Applications, University of Illinois:
The Concord Consortium: http://www.concord.org
Virtual Reality & Education Lab, East
Carolina University: http://eastnet.educ.ecu.edu/vr/vrel.htm
Networks
Here are some sources of more information
about networks in education:
Consortium for School Networking: http://www.cosn.org
Cisco Educational Archive: http://www.cearch.org
3Com Education site: http://www.3com.com/edu
Internet2: http://www.internet2.org
Internet Society: http://www.isoc.org
WWW Virtual Library: Networking: http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/bySubject/Networking.html