market features online courses in today's emerging eLearning market. ... eLearning tools such as Adobe, Microsoft, Linux Works, MAC-Learn, where.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning”
University of Quantum Dynamics Electronic Media Teaching Whitepaper
July 2009
Page
We are an increasingly connected global community with an endless number of ideas and information to share. Al Saracevic recently noted in his September 9, 2006, San FranciscoChronicle column that there are more than 2.5 billion connected cellular phones, smart phones, and digital communicators and computers on the planet. The Computer Industry Almanac for 2006 reports that the number of people on the Internet has passed the 1 billion subscriber mark; 2 billion subscribers expected by 2011. Participative websites such as Wikipedia have increased from 2% in 2005 to more than 12% of all Internet traffic by mid–2007 (www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId =9016938). Within six months of operation, YouTube announced that its viewers were downloading 100 million videos a day. Airwide, a company that provides mobile messaging services, predicted the United States would ring in 2008 by sending more than 730 million messages. Impressive, until one remembers that China currently has more than 1.6 billion text messages sent in an average day (http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-mobile/ articles/17231-airwide-predicts-record number-sms-messages-be-sent.htm). The number of e-mails, text messages, and instant messages exchanged on a daily basis continues to grow exponentially—and all this, as futurist Wayne Hodgins reminds us, with an estimated 15% of the world currently online. By
1
The use of eLearning is reemerging as a solution for delivering online, hybrid, and synchronous learning regardless of physical location, time of day, or digital reception or distribution device type. This white paper considers some of the reasons why institutions and enterprises are turning to eLearning to engage learners with ideas and information. It takes a look at a number of the “lessons eLearned,” based on more than 20 years of empirical evidence exploring the use of learning technologies and cognitive achievement. Finally, it offers practical suggestions for creating digital learning experiences that engage learners by building interest and motivation, and providing opportunities for active participation.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” all appearances, it seems that we are standing on the front wave of ubiquitous connectivity. And the more that we are connected, the more we want to find new avenues to engage with one another, and share ideas and information in ways that were not possible even just a few years ago. In this highly connected, always switched-on world, eLearning makes more sense than ever before. It offers anyone who needs to learn a new skill, prepare for a new job, or pursue a new career the opportunity to complete training, get a certificate, or earn a degree without moving or leaving their current employment. As eLearning extends the reach of the campus and corporate learning center, it provides learners with more ways in which to participate in education, training, and professional development, on terms increasingly defined by learners themselves. SAVING MONEY Community Colleges do not have the access to the same level of funding that Universities have, and on ever decreasing state and federal budgets, community and city budgets, the Community Colleges like Antelope Valley College find themselves cutting programs, and almost always the ones which benefit the students and community. By utilizing the eLearning or Internet learning environment building maintenance and facility expansion costs are reduced, they are not required to purchase additional land, and they are no longer a warehouse for students; the requirements are a T3 Internet line, a dedicated server farm, Internet connected laptops for the Professors, and software that will be used in place of a classroom. Parking lots will not be required, nor will transportation for either the staff or the students. The Community Colleges that have military personnel registered will not lose them when they are transferred to other bases or to war zones, or corporate persons transferred to other locations by their companies. Nor does it matter where the teachers and Professors are as long as they have Internet access. The staff needs more computer technicians for hardware and software, network administrators and full time IT Webmasters. A satellite uplink is preferable but not required if a good long term deal is made with the ISP.
Page
Anywhere on the globe that has Internet access resides potential students and faculty members with an understanding of the regional customs and language groups, who can teach the same course offerings in degree programs offered at Community Colleges. CEU/CME programs are pretty much limited to highly regulated countries like the United States and Canada. In the global
2
Increasing Student Body
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” environment they are not required, but are often subscribed to for additional or new knowledge in their field. THE eLEARNING MARKET The American Society for Training and Development (http://www.astd.org/) notes that technology-mediated training and education—eLearning—represents an increasing percentage of the training and education industry. According to a recent report by Learnframe, the global education and training opportunity is a total available market of $2 trillion. IDC (MacStravick, 2006) has noted that the growth rate for the different education and training market segments is projected at 10–15% CAGR. In corporate sectors such as banking, finance, and insurance, eLearning is gradually upstaging conventional training methods thanks to the immense benefits eLearning offers in terms of cost savings and employee productivity. Government initiatives include looking to eLearning and training support for first responses and those involved in homeland security and emergency services. Two additional pressures affecting government employees include the growth of online self-service and centralized customer service centers, a phenomena also being experienced in the telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries. The anticipated retirements of the “Boomer” generation across all sectors is forcing organizations to actively seek out ways to capture expertise before it walks out the door. Claire Schooley from Forrester Research (2006) has estimated that more than 45% of government and pharmaceutical employees are likely to retire from service during the next five years. The 2006 IDC report also suggested that the global learning market for higher education is set to grow with a healthy CAGR of 12%, to $1.89 billion by 2008. The Sloan Consortium annual online learning benchmarking report notes that more than 90% of all postsecondary institutions in the United States currently offer some form of eLearning. Online enrollments increased at a rate of more than 18% in 2005, compared with traditional enrollment at a rate of 4% (Allen and Seaman, 2005).
Page
“Virtual classrooms” are generally developed as distributed learning environments that take advantage of synchronous experiences such as classes, seminars, and e-mentoring, as well as digital online courses and flexible learning content creation and deployment opportunities.
3
ASTD estimates that among its top learning benchmark organizations, up to 40% of corporate education is currently being offered via some form of eLearning, with the majority delivered as online courses. A recent Gartner report (2005) speculates that perhaps only one-third of the current eLearning market features online courses in today’s emerging eLearning market.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Virtual classrooms are expected to grow in adoption across all vertical markets due to ease of use and increased awareness of the benefits of deploying learning management systems (LMS) and learning content management systems (LCMS) for managing many of the artifacts associated with virtual teaching and training activities. Today’s more flexible virtual classroom systems create more demand for commercial and community produced learning content assets. Attractive offerings, such as simulation-based, game-based, and mobile learning, are also expected to drive the future demand for more and higher quality digital content. The concept of eLearning in 2009 is not the same eLearning that first appeared on the education and training industry’s horizons in the mid 1990s. Back then, great excitement came from realizing that the Internet—and more specifically, the World Wide Web—had the power to completely transform teaching, training, learning, and performance support practices. Excitement about the possibilities caused eLearning’s proponents to overpromise on what they believed eLearning offered to the education, training, and performance support industries. Not surprisingly, eLearning underdelivered on virtually all its many promises. Following the dot-com crash of 2001, eLearning practitioners—from instructional designers and content analysts to web designers and graphic artists—took a hard look at the things that worked in successful eLearning programs. What emerged was an appreciation for programs that delivered scalable, standardized courses that achieved reliable, repeatable results. The caution exercised in the shadow of the crash resulted in a period of eLearning more notable for its standardization than for its innovation. But it also helped spark the emergence of rapid eLearning tools such as Adobe, Microsoft, Linux Works, MAC-Learn, where easier-to-use content creation tools gave subject matter experts a chance to contribute to the digital content dialogue. Inspired by the ongoing quest for innovative, personalized, portable, and engaging “just-the-right-stuff” experiences, today’s eLearning designers are turning to the disciplines of web and software design, advertising, architecture, instructional design, and learning science for methodological guidance. Today’s eLearning takes advantage of a broad and rich foundation of multidisciplinary media and methodologies.
Page
Virtual classroom—Continues to be the most familiar analog for building eLearning programs. The intention of virtual classrooms is to extend the structure and services that accompany formal education programs from the campus or learning center to learners, wherever they are located. Virtual classrooms are for those who may be pursuing a distance education program made up entirely of online lessons, or it may include experiences where learners
4
TYPES OF e-LEARNING
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” join in from a variety of distributed locations in a real-time class session via the Internet. The virtual classroom model includes places for posting papers for review and comment, completing tutorials, distributing class assignments, team review of more secure PDF files containing multimedia assets, and breaking away into study sections using web conferencing tools. Rapid eLearning—A direct response to eLearning designs that had excluded nontechnical subject matter experts (SMEs) and learners alike from contributing multimedia learning content to the knowledgebase. Rapid eLearning uses tools to reduce the time it takes to produce rich, engaging learning content, while allowing more nontechnical contributors, including SMEs and students, to share their SCORM and AICC conformant learning objects as standalone movies or as an element of a multimedia portfolio that can be more securely shared within a PDF document. Online learning ----- Refers to courseware that is delivered over the Internet to learners at a variety of locations, where the primary interaction between the learner and the experiences of their learning occurs via networked computer technology. Increasingly, learning management systems are serving as the basis for building online programs where the learning experience is entirely mediated through a digital interface. Software tools have long been the de facto standard for creating interactive digital learning content and include such familiar products Adobe, Linux-Create, Microsoft Office, Mac-Office, Open Office to name a few. The rising trend of integrating dynamic, modular learning content—learning objects—in face-to face and eLearning programs alike is expecting to drive greater demand for solutions built by Software developers on education platforms. Greater interoperability with industry-leading LMS platforms extends integration of such software.
Page
Performance support systems—Decision support tools, checklists, and other kinds of aids that are designed to bring workflow support to the point of need. Performance support tools can be simple and straightforward or richly immersive, depending on need and criticality of performance. Many well known software firms supply these tools to respond to any and all eLearning deployment models.
5
Mobile learning—Builds on the availability of ubiquitous networks and portable digital devices, including laptop computers, PDAs, game consoles, MP3 players, and mobile phones. Mobile learning takes advantage of place-independent flexibility that comes from working away from the desktop. Mobile learning provides the opportunity to connect informal learning experiences that occur naturally throughout the day with formal learning experiences, such as those encountered in the virtual classroom model, using games or online learning implementations.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” TEACHING & LEARNING From a teaching and learning perspective, the file type is most significant in its ability to distribute specific kinds of learning content in reliable, secure ways. This give learning organizations the assurance of knowing that learning content produced using specific software tools do not require any additional student downloads for distributing digital content assets. Some of the ways that this learning content is used includes but is not limited to: • • • • • •
Course resources: syllabi, reading lists, assignments, reading assignments Multimedia: applications, animations, pictures, videos, blogs, wikis, podcasts Flexible content: SCORM and AICC conforming learning objects Web conferences Virtual workspaces Community: social media, social networks • Course Books on Kindle (Amazon.com) digital reader, which may include supplemental reading such as novels, workbooks, research manuals, etc.
Growing sophistication in organizational analytics methods are beginning to correlate investments in human capital and enterprise IT systems with enterprise success metrics such as revenue, profitability, knowledge measurement, retention, and talent attraction. The use of eLearning provides a foundation for performance monitoring that makes those correlations between people and learning technologies possible. For example, ASTD Benchmarking Forum enterprises have been reported to outperform “Standard and Poor’s Index” companies by a ratio of 7:1. Enterprise eLearning benefits appear to be realized on two distinct fronts: • Need and interests of individuals who are linked to competency and accomplishment • Needs of the enterprise, tied to true business results
Page
Individuals can monitor their own progress and determine what the next step in their professional development should be. A range of learning resources— individual objects, online communities of practitioners, professional advisors and mentors, and so on—become available when and where those resources are needed by the learner. Learning management systems also give business managers ways to begin tracking returns on learning investments, time spent on
6
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are an increasingly important part of this conversation. When used in conjunction with reliable, valid, and predictive assessments, and when correlated with an individual’s learning profile, an LMS can generate data for diagnosing skill gaps and prescribing activities and experiences that link learning events with on-the-job experience.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” learning tasks, and content use patterns. An LMS makes it relatively easy to track course completion, task completion, resource use, and historical use data as well as assessment results and various qualitative evaluations. LMS adoption in higher education is close to 90% of all U.S. postsecondary institutions, with the LMS adoption rate growing around the world. Campus leaders fully admit that in some cases faculty use of LMS platforms continues to revolve around posting course syllabi online, collecting student assignments, and reporting student grades (Kvavik and Caruso, 2005). As learning stakeholders gain greater comfort stepping outside the structure of the online class and start making better use of hybrid and blended learning resources and methods, the dependence upon learning management systems as we know them today are likely to shift. While certainly important, an LMS is still just one of many ingredients needed to craft a successful recipe for eLearning success.
Current landscape of eLearning adoption
Page
Of course, we’ve learned that “always accessible” information literally bursts open the walls of the classroom and rocks the locus of classroom control. It can be a disruptive influence in academic settings. Being able to check on facts and figures in the middle of a professor-led discussion democratizes classroom dynamics in previously unimaginable ways. It means richer and more productive online workflow tools. It means that the emerging Web 2.0 collaborative and contributive technologies such as blogs, wikis, and vlogs need to be as much a part of the digital learning dialogue as are eBooks and curriculum modules available from commercial publishers.
7
Among working adult learners, eLearning has found a particularly loyal and growing audience. Increasingly, eLearning is being selected by campus-based students as part of campus-based, face-to-face classes, as well as in online and blended eLearning programs. And eLearning continues to offer flexible alternatives for meeting the ongoing organization requirements of a diverse work force. As workers become increasingly mobile—and today, workers are considered mobile if they are out of the office more than 20% of the time—the need to support performance at the point of need is accelerating interest in mobile learning and decision-support tools, interactive checklists, podcasts, and VOD (video on demand) casts. Gaming has also emerged as one of the most compelling new trends in the learning industries, and is increasingly being numbered among the most successful strategies for supporting the learning and performance support needs of NetGens, Millennials, and Boomers alike—an important challenge facing today’s learning professionals working across all sectors.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Designers of eLearning must be prepared to balance desires for effective experience with the demands of effective instruction. Both learners and teachers need to be mindful that by combining the best of design from disciplines such as interface design, experience design, architecture, cognition, and instruction, the next wave of eLearning will hopefully enable more engagement with ideas and information in revolutionary ways than ever before.
Page
Extending better experiences—particularly richly immersive online experience— is the driving obsession of the software and web services industries. The demand for applications of increasing complexity has continued to outpace the ability of traditional web applications to represent that complexity in online settings. Pushing flat-file websites beyond their ability is often a frustrating, confusing, or disengaging user experience that results in dropped users, low click-through rates, lost connections, and increased costs. This phenomenon is not limited to the act of completing e-commercial transactions. The high percentage of eLearning course completion failures have been attributed to poorly designed online experiences that demotivate learners with repetitive, boring functionality and other various frustrations. The experience of completing an instructionally sound eLearning course shouldn’t have to be painful. Web applications have come a long way from the first hard-coded, unchanging web pages and CGI web server scripts (Duhl, 2003). As each successive wave of client and web server technology ups the ante on the previous generation, improvements regarding capability, integration, and responsiveness continue to come forward. Taking a technological view of what is required to enable a high-quality, interactive online experiences, some of the attributes include the following: • Utilize a ubiquitous student to maximize the audience reach. • Run unchanged across the Internet on multiple platforms. • It must execute well across low- or high-bandwidth connections. • Restore processing power (not just rendering capabilities) to the student. • Deliver engaging user interfaces with a high degree of interactivity. • Represent processes, data configuration, sale, and feedback complexity. • Utilize audio, video images and text in a seamless manner. • Support the mobile workflow by allowing users to work online and offline. • Allow the student to determine what content or data to access and when. • Access multiple middle-tier services (both .NET and Java™) and back-end data stores. • Provide a dynamic and powerful front end for the evolving web services-based network, using emerging standards such as XML and SOAP. • Integrate with legacy applications and systems. • Allow for the incremental addition of new functions to existing web applications and environments to get the most out of existing web application investments. (Duhl, 2003, p. 6) “In Support of More Engaging eLearning”.
8
Creating engaging experiences for learning
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Each model of eLearning described earlier in this white paper provides different approaches to engaging learners with their experiences. Each model shares a number of similarities: • Shaped by some degree of technology mediation, and is looking for a way to transcend distance. • Assumes some degree of self-regulation or independence on the part of the learner. • Acknowledges the value of facilitation by an instructor, agent, or guide. When each individual model for eLearning creation is influenced by the heuristics for creating rich digital experiences offered by Duhl and his colleagues, the likelihood of improving the experience of extending cognitive performance is greatly improved.
Lessons eLearned The first eLearning adoptions of the late 1990s represented one of the first viable opportunities for bringing together learning stakeholders—from the academy, government, nonprofit sector, and business—to work toward what many believed to be a “new world order” of personalized learning. Unfortunately, the earliest days of eLearning turned out to be a lesson in naïveté, hubris, and missed opportunity (Wagner 2002). With eLearning emerging from the shadow of its post-dot.com readjustments, entire generations of new practitioners are being drawn to eLearning for the first time. The following observations are offered as a brief but pointed summary of some of the important “lessons eLearned” from more than 20 years of program evaluation data and research exploring the impact of technology on learning and cognitive performance.
Page
• Different kinds of learning demand appropriate strategies, tools, and resources. Concrete operational learning can be facilitated using representational media, whereas teaching complex problem-solving—such as performing surgery or landing an airplane—may be far better served by allowing learners to practice developing those skills in a safe, risk-free virtual
9
• Learning is a deeply personal act that is facilitated when learning experiences are relevant, reliable, and engaging. During those early days of eLearning, we learned the hard way that simply building a learning system that could be accessed over the Internet did not guarantee that people would have much need for, or interest in, the courses and programs, regardless of the provider. We learned that shoveling courseware online did not provide anyone—faculty, students, or administrators—with an online experience that was much more than tedious electronic page-turning. Sometimes we learned the hard way that “doing learning unto others” could quickly demotivate and disengage the very people we had hoped to serve.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” environment. Having just-in-time access to information, even in a flat-file, textbased form may be far preferable to having no access to any information at all.
Questions about media Appropriateness from a pure cognitive perspective is likely to be mitigated by aesthetic and experience quality metrics. More than 20 years of empirical evidence underscores that there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” technology solution for learning (Clark, 1983; Jonassen, 2004). • Technology in and of itself may not guarantee better learning. But when effectively deployed, technology can help focus attention while attracting and maintaining a learner’s interest. Technology engages learners by structuring and organizing information, and by displaying and demonstrating procedures and operations. It can help make a learning experience more memorable and can help relate new information to that which is already known. Technology can simulate a range of conditions, immerse people in virtual environments, and provide safe practice opportunities as mastery is developed—all of which are necessary conditions for maximizing the probability that learning will occur. Perhaps even more important, technology allows us to have relationships with information in our own, unique ways. This phenomenon effectively shifts the question from “Will technology improve learning?” to “How much further will technology let us push the envelope of human cognitive, affective, and kinesthetic experience?” • The more engaging the experience and the more intentional the results, the greater is the likelihood that learning will occur. In reflecting on the importance of experience design in software development, Kevin Mullet (2003) noted that early software users were themselves programmers and consequently were highly tolerant of complex interactive models and primitive visual displays. Today’s users are very different. Interactive software is now considered useful only to the extent that ordinary users can understand and take advantage of the functionality it provides. Looking at it from a learningoriented perspective, when technology can help strengthen learner motivation, focus attention, make a learning moment more memorable, or demonstrate the relevancy of learning to performance, the greater is the likelihood that technology will have a direct positive effect on learning (Wagner, 2005).
Page
Assessment is a critical part of the learning process. Formative assessment helps guide students toward a shared understanding or performance goal and provides focus as students complete major milestones in their coursework. Summative assessment ensures that students have met the final goals of their projects and achieved a desired level of understanding or performance.
10
STUDENT ASSESSMENT
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Learning management systems and other digital communication tools have changed how coursework is distributed and submitted, and now we have powerful new tools for reviewing and grading digital coursework. Digital assessment is particularly appropriate for grading collections of projects or ePortfolios, semester- or year-long projects, and projects that contain several different file types. When you use innovative digital assessment strategies, you also give your students an opportunity to become familiar with and practice the digital communication skills that will prepare them for the 21 st century workforce.
Digital assessment of student work: • Digital methods help emphasize assessment as an iterative process that creates a feedback loop between teachers and students. • The assessment workflow is streamlined and efficient because all materials are in one digital document. • Audio and video commenting tools help you provide feedback on difficult concepts. • Time-stamping comments and reviews preserve past versions so viewing the progression of work over time is easy. In addition, this feature can facilitate coursework that includes student reflection exercises. • Digital documents are easy to distribute among several reviewers, allowing for simultaneous reviews that you can merge into one version. STUDENT USE OF TECHNOLOGY Students today find it easy to pick up any new electronic device and learn how to communicate with it—whether it’s the newest cell phone or PDA. They expect to be able to use their technology. While it’s exciting that most students can use today’s tools, a question we should now ask is: are they effective communicators who can compete in today’s—and tomorrow’s—job market? Can students use technology to create persuasive messages for audiences beyond their peer group? Can they think critically to design a communication that meets the needs of a specific audience? Do they know how to select the best media for their message?
Page
The world of communication now includes all kinds of media—audio, video, rich media presentations, interactive websites, DVD, simulations, and virtual meeting environments. Today’s companies and organizations, large and small, use different types of media to reach and retain their audience. Knowing how to select the right medium for the message and create different forms of
11
The answer is yes, and no. Most students can IM, e-mail, search the web, and make simple multimedia presentations. What they’re not prepared to do is create persuasive messages for people other than their peers.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” communication helps students achieve at school and beyond. Many colleges already understand this need and require digital communication skills for nontechnology majors. For example, at the University of Nevada, “any student”—regardless of his or her career and professional goals—“can benefit from a strong foundation in digital communications,” says Judy Strauss, associate professor and chair of managerial sciences at the College of Business Administration. Further, using multimedia offers students a way to find their own voice and not be limited to just the written word. That’s why Adobe Macromedia is so interested in exploring and supporting the best ways to teach all students to communicate digitally. DIGITAL COMMUNICATION DEFINED Effective digital communication is the ability to create persuasive communications in different media, be it websites, video, audio, text, or animated multimedia. Digital communication is a foundation skill for most careers today, as most people will be involved in some form of conceptualizing, producing, delivering, and receiving such communications in their jobs and lives. Starting in elementary school and extending to higher education, students can learn a variety of digital communication skills across all their courses, whether they build multimedia presentations to demonstrate their knowledge of academic subjects, create e-portfolios of coursework, or present ideas in a virtual classroom.
Page
When students can express themselves through a variety of media, they are motivated and engaged. For many, multimedia communication is a first step in owning their schoolwork and sharing it with a wider audience beyond the teacher. Students are particularly intrigued with the multimedia they see on the web and want to learn how to build their own Flash movies. While they might think Flash is just a cool toy, there’s an opportunity to explore what makes outstanding digital communication powerful. The class can analyze their favorite media examples—dissecting how it grabs attention, persuades, and
12
In the past year, several reports on digital literacy have been published. They describe digital literacy, what it is, and its importance as a 21st century skill for this generation of learners. The Metiri Group and NCREL published, “enGauge 21st Century Skills, Literacy in the Digital Age,” in which they showcase the skills with which students will be ready to thrive in a technological, global environment. Based on two years of research, they’ve developed a collection of skill clusters to be included right next to rigorous academic standards: digital-age literacy, inventive thinking, high productivity, and effective communication. Effective communication presumes that students select and use multiple technology tools to create persuasive messages.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” even teaches. As they learn how professionals design, students are inspired to make their own communication better. In universities and schools around the world, more and more faculty assigns students to build electronic portfolios. E-portfolios let students demonstrate their understanding of course content and communicate reflections on their progress. E-portfolios can be simple when based on web page templates, or elegant, complex designs when created by visual arts students. All are relevant digital communication. Students start communicating digitally at an early age and will continue through rest of their lives. How technically advanced they become will depend on the level of skill they need for their work or their personal lives. In school, it’s important for all students to communicate what they know. Digital communication levels the playing field. Some students may struggle with writing, and find their stronger voice in images, video, and audio. Special education students may find it easier to express themselves verbally or through images, rather than in writing. Multimedia not only motivates students, it taps into their different strengths and allows them to tell a story more richly. Demonstrating understanding of a science process, for example, can be difficult to do with words alone. When a student shows the process using animated images with narration, then the explanation can be more complete. And as they build knowledge of science, students learn digital communication skills. We don’t know what types of communication tools will be available when primary school students graduate from college. We do know that students need substantive opportunities to learn how to approach a communication problem, select appropriate media and express themselves effectively across different scenarios. If we give them real exposure to a lot of communication media they can become adept users of the next generation of tools. Communication
Page
When students learn to communicate effectively in web media, they’re not just learning how to use software tools. They’re learning how to approach a project, to understand their audience, message, and purpose. They learn to think critically as they decide on an effective way to present their message.
13
ISTE National Educational Technology Standards note that technical expertise is just one component of a range of skills that will help prepare students to live, learn, and work in an information-rich society. The organization emphasizes that effective technology integration into schools can enable students of all ages to learn collaborative, problem-solving, and creativity skills .
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” College students especially should develop a wide range of digital and cognitive skills to prepare them for jobs. For instance, journalism majors learn to write and build web content since TV and newspapers all have web presence. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses represent one-half of the U.S. economy output and employ one-half of the private sector workforces. And they’ve generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade. In a small company, no matter what kind of business, it’s now necessary to be able to communicate digitally with clients and customers. At the very least, the company needs a website and someone has to be able to build and maintain it. When an organization is very small, people share responsibilities, so more and more prospective employers will be looking for strong digital communicators who can collaborate as team players. Students have the technology. They experience the world through multimedia and want to communicate in the same way. We can prepare them to communicate effectively by teaching them the whole communication process from planning the message all the way to testing for usability. MANAGINGS STUDENTS AND BUDGETS Colleges and universities worldwide face pressure to improve services for their students, faculty, and staff while still controlling spending. Students and faculty expect 24x7 online self-service accesses to information and services. At the same time, institutions need efficient, cost-effective systems deployment in response to tighter budgets. And these systems must support compliance with government mandates requiring more complicated reporting.
Page
A lifecycle management application enables institution-wide collaboration across business processes and users, supporting more effective service, increasing efficiencies, and lowering total cost of ownership. Its global approach brings together experience and best business practices from different educational systems, educational levels, and cultures. By accommodating the diverse aspects of international academic programs, the software helps institutions to be successful in a globally collaborating world. Its flexibility and
14
The key to a successful student administration system is to effectively coordinate core business activities by leveraging real-time transactions and information across a decentralized organization. The solution should manage and streamline the range of student-related processes and integrate them with business processes in keeping with college or university procedures – while delivering self-service functions to prospects, students, faculty, staff, and administrators. It should also be flexible enough to evolve with changing public policy, student behavior, and technology. Traditional systems can’t handle these requirements.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” scalability supports ongoing transformation, growth, and optimization of business processes. Such a system gives you increased accuracy and transparency in the administration of the entire student life cycle – from prospecting for students to alumni relations. You can plan and develop curricula and academic programs valid for a certain period, such as degree-granting and continuing education programs. Courses of study and individual courses as well as academic years, sessions, the beginnings of classes, and the duration of registration and exam periods can be set up accordingly. You can optimize class schedules according to needs and resource limitations. Has it never been more challenging for universities, colleges, and research institutions to succeed in their core missions? Reduced funding from traditional sources has trimmed revenues, and competition for private funding – including grants, endowments, and alumni donations – is growing. Burgeoning student populations are creating physical space and service challenges. Government regulations pressure institutions to operate with a high degree of transparency, which intensifies the need to report, document, and track financial, demographic, and educational information. Demographic and regulatory reporting requirements are prompting additional spending on human resources management systems. Demand for corporate outreach and continuing education programs is increasing. Competition has intensified for the best students, faculty, and academic and research professionals. To address these myriad challenges, higher education and research institutions need to leverage IT that aligns with business requirements and supports change. Organizations need to operate more efficiently and integrate processes, from business services to academic affairs and student care, while collaborating externally with government agencies, service providers, and other constituents.
Page
An institution needs a portfolio of highly scalable solutions specifically designed to meet the unique needs of public and private colleges, universities, multi-campus institutions, research agencies, and medical colleges. Such a System must support all organizational processes, including campus management for student and academic services, grants management, student lifecycle management, financials, operations, human capital management, procurement, analytics, research, and asset management. It must help you sustain the continuing cycle of innovation and standardization in a single technology environment. And that platform must allow you to create
15
Yet many organizations still use fragmented, nonintegrated business systems. Inefficient, outdated, and expensive to maintain, these systems foster decision making that is tactical and reactive at best.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” applications on top of existing infrastructure and fully leverage current IT investments – for long-term adaptability, reduced costs, and flexible response to changing strategies. That’s a challenge for excellence that must be met every day. As the number of online courses continues to expand, so must the ways in which instructors engage in active facilitation of learning among their students. Institutions must focuses on one aspect of facilitation, the way in which we communicate and guide students in asynchronous learning networks (ALN) and how this process might be improved upon. While the evolution of ALN has made it increasingly easier to involve remotely based students in two-way communications and enable students to process more complex information, instructors are often required to adapt to new roles. While several frameworks have been developed to explain the role of the instructor, a system first proposed by Berge and later refined by others proposes a four part model consisting of pedagogical, social, technical, and managerial dimensions, each with a varying number of roles. For purposes of this paper, the social dimension and three roles (profession-inspirer, feedbackgiver, and interaction-facilitator) within the pedagogical dimension are considered the most important. These are depicted in the following format which was derived from work by Liu and colleagues. Dimension: Pedagogical Role: Profession Inspirer Description: Promote professional dialogue among online learners; relate personal experiences and cases to the discipline; point to professional organizations. Role: Feedback Giver Description: Provide timely and high quality feedback; provide formative feedback for continuous learning engagement. Role: Interaction-Facilitator Description: Facilitate peer interaction in online discussion through a wide range of facilitation strategies.
Page
In the traditional face-to-face classroom setting, each of these roles would be dependent upon both verbal and non-verbal cues. In the online environment, however, the primary form of communication is via text and therefore devoid of
16
Dimension: Social Role: Social Rapport Builder Description: Build social rapport; establish online teams; build online learning community.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” traditional paralinguistic cues. Arbaugh suggests that the relative low richness of text-based communication may make interdependent, ambiguous tasks particularly challenging. Critics of online learning, building on the low richness of text-based communication, contend that because interactions occur in a disembodied form, this lack of nuance leads to a loss of meaning. As such, it is argued that asynchronous learning is not sufficiently rich in the socially mediated practice that Vygotsky described as necessary to construct knowledge. However, this narrow interpretation of Vygotsky discounts the ability of learners to conceptualize “being” as anything other than a physical construct. The ability to project oneself through various media, termed social presence, was initially described by Short, Williams and Christie who proposed that, as critics of asynchronous learning contend, the ability to project verbal and nonverbal information directly impacted the degree to which presence was perceived. However, Rourke, Anderson, Garrison and Archer,] and Swan argued that this may not be the case as learners in online courses appeared to build effective learning communities by projecting their personalities through text alone. Lombard and Dutton viewed this creation of a presence in online courses as the ability to project oneself into a virtual. In an extension of this concept, Laffey, Lin and Lin described the social element of asynchronous communication evolving as learners come to view their interactions with tasks and tools as being a fluid, integrated process rather than as a series of tasks. They compared this process to a speaker interacting with others in a foreign language. The more fluent the speaker becomes with the new language the less difficult interactions become. Theoretically, this would mean that the technologies become part of the interaction itself and are therefore not viewed as objects upon which learners have to act to create virtual embodiments.
However, the study also revealed that an even stronger relation (R2 = 0.53) existed between perceived learning and overall satisfaction with the instructor.
Page
Richardson and Swan used regression analyses to determine the relationship between perceived social presence and perceived learning. Analysis of data collected from 17 courses revealed that 46% of the variability in perceived learning could be predicted by student perceptions of social presence.
17
Gunawardena and Zittle found that the sense of “being there” was established in the online environment through providing and interpreting emoticons as a replacement for nuance and nonverbal cues. Using a 14-item questionnaire, they found 60% of the variance in student satisfaction was attributable to perceptions of social comfort and presence. Rovai explained that this type of satisfaction can occur when text based, socio-emotional-driven interactions promote a sense of connectedness among learners in asynchronous learning networks (ALN).
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” This finding indicated that satisfaction with the instructor was at least as important as was perceived social presence. Further, the authors found that a strong relation (R2 = 0.36) existed between students’ perceptions of social presence and satisfaction with the instructor. Based on these findings it was concluded that “students’ perceptions of social presence were related to the perceptions of their instructors as having a satisfactory online presence in terms of amount of interaction and/or quality of that interaction.” Through factor analysis, Arbaugh found instructor immediacy behaviors in online courses were a significant predictor of student learning. Based on Gorham’s verbal immediacy scale, Arbaugh defined immediacy behaviors as being comprised of two parts. The first, classroom demeanor, “reflected the instructor’s use of personal examples, humor, and openness toward and encouragement of student ideas and discussion.” The second, name recognition, referred to the “extent to which the instructor was addressed by name by the students and vice versa.”
Page
Research on the use of standalone audio in ALN, especially audio feedback, is rather limited. The study that provided them with the most insight as to how audio feedback might be perceived by students was conducted by Jelfs and
18
Informed by the studies previously discussed, they have been improving on their design of ALN instruction to facilitate meaningful discourse and create dynamic learning environments. Specifically, in their courses over the past six semesters, they have attempted to incorporate recommendations found in the literature related to the projection of teaching presence through immediacy behaviors. Surveys of student satisfaction from these courses indicated that students were generally highly satisfied with our efforts and students’ qualitative feedback, when provided, typically made them believe they were doing a good job of creating a rich learning environment. However, even if social presence is strong, student may prefer even more interactive communication, and they questioned whether greater interaction might also apply to the projection of teaching presence. Arbaugh found media variety to be positively associated with perceived learning among students in web-based MBA courses. In a review of the literature, Liaw and Haung suggested that presentation of web-based course content through a variety of media positively impacted learner experiences. Ideally, they would have liked to have used an asynchronous videoconferencing mechanism similar to that envisioned by Watt, Walther and Nowak. Extending work by Walther and Burgoon, Watt and colleagues wrote that such a system would take full advantage of both verbal and nonverbal cues thereby increasing co-presence; “the sense that one is actively being perceived and that one is actively perceiving another.” However, based on previous student surveys they knew that approximately one third of their students were likely to be taking classes via dialup connections, making the use of streaming video impractical. Thus, the only feasible alternative available to them was the use of asynchronous audio.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Whitelock. These researchers created a virtual environment in which various navigational techniques were used. All of the participants indicated in followup interviews that the preprogrammed auditory feedback was as important to their success and satisfaction with the environment as was ease of navigation. Significantly, these two factors were considered to be even more important than interactivity or previous experience. Use of audio commenting in the face-to-face classroom can be traced to at least 1982, when Olson reported using the technique in English courses at a two year college. In a discussion of the technique, Olson opined that his students believed audio commenting reflected a sense of caring on the part of the instructor that extended beyond their written products. The ability to project through tone of voice, he argued, enabled the instructor “to be more supportive and caring.” Building on Olson’s work, Mellen and Summers provided students in an English course with tapes containing audio feedback and conducted surveys and interviews at the end of the semester. Results demonstrated that students were likely to view audio feedback as being positive regardless of the context. Additionally, 70% of students reported that they felt encouraged to revise their work as a result of receiving auditory feedback and 54% felt more confident about their writing. These findings provide strong, highly positive indicators of student perceptions regarding the use of audio feedback and point to its potential as a tool in asynchronous online courses. In a study of student-student audio based interactions in ALN, Kim found that students had generally positive perceptions of the medium, but that its use decreased motivation. However, audio did increase social presence, a finding that supported earlier research in which Reeves and Nass concluded that human voice increased social presence. In a seeming contradiction, Bargeron and colleagues found that students preferred to use text rather than audio in threaded discussions because they found it easier and quicker to read text messages than listen to audio. However, the sample size in the study conducted by Bargeron and colleagues was small with only 4 of the 6 total participants indicating a preference for text based feedback.
Page
The belief that audio feedback increased feelings of being more involved and “a real part” of the class was the second most commonly expressed theme (n = 15).
19
The most frequently expressed theme was the ability to detect nuance and inflection in the audio commenting. In general, students believed that verbal feedback gave them increased insight into what the instructor was attempting to convey and that it produced a more comfortable, less formal learning environment.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” Though students often began their discussions of involvement in general terms, subsequent probing revealed that this perception was usually related to what they believed to be a lessening of social distance when audio was used. For students (n = 12) who cited increased learning and content retention as reasons for preferring audio to written feedback, most (n = 9) related their preference to learning style. The final theme expressed by students (n = 10) was related to the degree they perceived the instructor to care about their learning when audio versus written feedback was provided. In most instances (n = 8), this perception was closely associated with nuance and feelings of involvement as eloquently expressed by one student when she said: “The final thing is about the way I think the audio shows that you cared about us. It’s not really something that’s out there by itself though so I need to talk about the whole picture if that’s alright with you? I started talking about all of this by talking about feeling the tone of your voice and knowing more about what you were trying to say than when I got just the words on paper… err rather on screen…well whatever. We can start there and then when I got to understand what you were saying it gave me some idea of who you were and that made me want to be more involved. Then when I started feeling really involved and all it made me feel like you really cared about what was going on. That’s a warm fuzzy I haven’t gotten with online classes before.”
Page
They considered the role audio feedback played in developing this type of interpersonal relationship with students in their asynchronous courses to be a compelling enough reason for its continued use even if no other positive factors had been discovered. Findings related to perceptions of increased caring on the part of the instructor, a theme that was frequently tied to nuance and increased involvement, confirm opinions held by Olsen from his use of the technique in
20
Though students can project themselves and their emotions through text based communication, two thirds of students (n = 19) in this study cited ability to understand nuance as reason for preferring audio to text feedback. This finding is important because it extends upon Richardson and Swan’s social presence research, in which a strong relation (R2 = 0.36) was found to exist between students’ perceptions of social presence and satisfaction with the instructor. In addition, it is likely that an enhanced ability to detect nuance impacts student perceptions of the instructor’s use of humor, and openness toward and encouragement of student ideas and discussion; key immediacy behaviors cited by Arbaugh. The second most commonly expressed theme, increased feelings of involvement, is important because it reinforces the sense of community and perception of “being there.” In terms of how audio commenting decreased social distance for students, the best example can be found in words offered by one student: “It was like that bubble started getting popped in all these different places and made me feel like you were reaching in there and touching me.”
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” the traditional classroom. Though students were hesitant to explore this theme in great detail during the initial interviews, it was apparent that it was of considerable importance and increased overall satisfaction with the course and the instructor. The significant increase in the percentage of students expressing this theme in follow-up questionnaires in subsequent courses is worth noting. They believed audio feedback should be considered a means by which to increase positive perceptions of the quality of instructor interactions and, by extension, social presence in ALN. While the preceding three themes support their contention that asynchronous audio feedback increased teaching presence and decreased social distance, it may be even more important to examine the positive impact the technique had on perceived learning. Though slightly less than half of all respondents, in both the original and follow-up interviews, indicated that they retained information and were able to synthesize instructor comments better when they received audio feedback, document analysis in the original study indicated that the impact may have been even greater.
From the instructors’ perspective, the ability to reduce the time required to provide feedback by approximately 75% was a compelling reason to adopt the
Page
These findings indicate that audio feedback enhanced learning for our students; though much more research needs to be conducted to determine how generalizable these finding may be across subject matter, instructors, and institutional contexts. Since the completion of this study, other early adopters in their college have experimented with audio feedback following the techniques they employed. The quantitative, qualitative and anecdotal evidence has been overwhelmingly positive. Over 450 students in courses taught by these instructors have now received audio feedback. According to these instructors, approximately one third of their students have submitted unsolicited feedback expressing a strong preference for this technique over text based feedback. No negative feedback has been received.
21
Random assignment was used to determine whether audio or text feedback was utilized for each topic and their analysis revealed no differences in difficulty for topics assigned to each type of feedback. Even given that control, information for which audio feedback was provided was used approximately 350% more frequently than information for which text based feedback was provided. With respect to level of application, students applied content for which audio feedback was provided at the two highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in slightly more than 70% of the cases. In contrast, content for which text based feedback was provided was only explored at similar levels in less than 20% of cases. Not only did students retain material better when they received audio commenting on it, but they applied that content in more cognitively complex ways.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” technique. However, it is important to note that this reduction in time was coupled with a 255% increase in the quantity of feedback provided. While increases in quantity of feedback delivered with less demand on instructors’ time is a strong reason to use the technique, evidence that it also increased retention and understanding of content at deeper levels makes it hard to argue against using audio commenting at this point. Still, more research is needed to determine potential differences in the types of feedback provided when textbased and audio feedback are used, and the precise mechanisms that facilitate increases in student learning. The addition of “Video Feedback” is compelling, as anyone at “YouTube”, “Face-Book”, or the Motion-Picture and Television production industry will attest. The “Game-Boy”, “X-Box” and similar media are but a portion of what is available to reach the students with their own media. CONCLUSION Our world is changing, and information and communication technology (ICT) is central to this change. Digital media has revolutionized the information society. These advances in ICT have dramatically changed the learning and teaching process, and have expanded new learning opportunities and access to educational resources beyond those traditionally available. The provision of a telecommunication infrastructure available for learning and teaching is gradually increasing, and many schools are exploiting the benefits of ICT to enhance the quality of teaching. The introduction of ICT to our schools will create new possibilities for learners and teachers to engage in new ways of information selection, gathering, sorting and analysis. In addition, ICT has the potential to enhance the management and administrative capacity of schools. This White Paper should evoke a positive response to a new information and communications technology environment in education.
Given the magnitude of the task ahead, and in the true light of the public and private sector joining hands to ensure that our children receive high-quality
Page
The challenge of providing modern technologies to schools in order to enhance the quality of learning and teaching will require a significant investment.
22
We all want to ensure that every school has access to a wide choice of diverse, high quality communication services. We all want all students, teacher and local communities to benefit from this investment. The services provided by such an initiative will enhance lifelong learning and provide unlimited opportunities for personal growth and development to all.
White Paper on Information and Communications Technology – “eLearning” learning and teaching; This White Paper represents a new framework for the collaboration of public colleges and the private sector in the provision of ICT in education. Through this may be the initiative we all hope will be able to turn our schools into centers of quality learning and teaching for the twenty-first century. It is UQD’s intent that this White Paper will establish the right conditions for ICT in education to flourish in the coming decades. Prof. Dr. Stephen B. Palmer, Esq. Chancellor University of Quantum Dynamics
Page
23
With the help of Adobe Systems Group, Microsoft Education Group, SourceForge and Moodle, Linux Works, Sun Microsystems, Max Plank Institute, Progressive University and Motion Mountain Physics. Special thanks to Dr. Tom Bearden, Dr. Tom Velone, Dr. John Bedini, Dr. W. John Martin.
