Networked Learning in China’s Higher Education Institutions: Opportunities and Challenges Ronghuai Huang Beijing Normal University, China
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ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to present the opportunities and challenges in popularizing networked learning in China. As one of the largest and an economic developing rapidly country, China is facing the need of extending the scale of higher education, and then, to popularize networked learning. This paper presents the opportunities, including ICT infrastructure well equipped and Internet popularizing rapidly, the demand of popularizing higher education, and strong governmental support in using ICT to promote the quality of higher education. After that, four challenges faced by institutions and staff in popularizing networked learning are analyzed: 1) the task-focused activities, (2) appropriate resources to support task-focused activities, (3) learner’s strategy and learning support, and (4) obstacle of new evaluation methods in traditional education context.
Keywords Networked learning, ICT, higher education, infrastructure
INTRODUCTION The growth of the Internet and more recently the Web have made it conceivable that education can take place in a learning environment that is based on instant communication and the ability to search a vast array of resources. Educational institutions, both further and higher education, are becoming places of almost endless changes, and the growth of networked learning is only one of the many changes our institutions are adapting to, or embracing. The changes include rapid growth in both student numbers and student diversity, and the growth of borderless education. Educational institutions are expected to embrace the rapidly changing technologies that are potentially allowing for different modes of teaching. Networked learning is an educational form that is closely associated with the development and deployment of computer networks and the rise of a networked society. (Steeples & Jones, 2002) The Centre for Studies of Advanced Learning Technology (CSALT) group at Lancaster University has been associated with the following definition of networked learning. “Networked learning is learning in which information and communication technology (C&IT) is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources.” (See http://csalt.lancs.ac.uk/jisc/definition.htm) The key element of this definition is the term ‘connections’. The notion of learning emphasized in this definition is a relational view in which learning takes place in relation to others and in relation to an array of resources. The idea of networked learning stresses the interaction of learners, tutors and their resources 1
through networks (Jones & Esnault, 2004). Given this context of change can we identify how the move towards large scale networked learning impacts on Chinese educational institutions? How can we ensure that this innovation is sustainable in China?A number of case studies exploring the introduction of networked learning on an institutional scale have been carried out (Huang et al, 2003). Even so, the development of networked learning, especially large scale networked learning, is still posing considerable challenges to institutions and for the individuals within these institutions. This paper presents the opportunities of networked learning growth in China, including its cornerstone ICT infrastructure, the demands from the rapid expansion of higher education scale, the promotion policy from Chinese government, and then analyzes the challenges faced by the institutes and staff.
INFRASTRUCTURE (ICT) Internet popularizing in China In the last few years, ICT-related infrastructure in China has been under dynamic construction. Till July 2005, there were 45.60 million computers with access to Internet in China, and the domain names and websites registered in .cn numbered respectively at 430 thousand and 668 thousand, the bandwidth to the Internet had rose to 80Gbps, the number of IPv4 sites nearly 60 million. (See: Statistic Report of People's Republic of China on the internet network development, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), July, 2005) Although current network users represent only 7.6% of the population of China, the total number of over 100 millions network users in China is the second largest in the world, only less than that in the USA. Thus, the Internet in China is being popularized rapidly, especially in large cities and capital city of each province, in which the universities and colleges located. This provides the possibilities for people to learn by accessing learning material online, group working, and communication with each other, etc.
CERNET – a special network in China’s education system The Chinese Education & Research Network (CERNET) is one of the largest networks in China with total length of 20 000 km of DWDM/SDH and total bandwidth 40Gbps of network backbone. The bandwidth of trunk line of CERNET is up to 2.5Gbps, and 35 main cities are connected to CERNET with bandwidth of 155Mbps each. CERNET connects over 100 top universities with bandwidths from 100 to 1000Mbps. In 2004 CERNET2 had been established by using the next generation Internet technology and China Grid had been established for integrating all the educational resources. So CERNET, providing the opportunities to share the educational resources on campus and among all the institutions, is a special network in China’s education system.
OUTLINE OF CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION In 1995, there were altogether 2210 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in China, among which 1054 were regular HEIs and 1156 adult HEIs. Since the higher education is at the stage of popularizing, the enrollments of universities and colleges in mainland China have jumped quickly and the number of students increased at the rate of over 20 percent annually from 1999 to 2003. In 2000, college and universities enrollments increased by one-third or more (see Table 1). Table 1 The Number of College Students in Mainland of China in Recent Years 2
Year
Enrolment(million)
# Students(million)
Annual increasing (%)
1990
0.61
2.06
0.0
1997
1.00
3.17
5.1
1998
1.08
3.41
7.4
1999
1.60
4.13
21.3
2000
2.21
5.56
34.5
2001
2.68
7.19
29.3
2002
3.21
9.03
25.6
2003
3.82
11.09
22.7
The figure is based on the statistics declared by the National Statistics Bureau, PRC, excluding graduate students. Available at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/index.htm
In 1990 and 1997 the gross enrolment ratios of China were only 3.0% and 6.1% which were much lower than the developed regions such as northern America (77.2% and 80.7%) and Europe (34.5% and 50.7%). For the detailed comparative data see Table 2. The college enrollment rate in 2004 is about 19%, and it is expected to reach about 40% in 2020 according to China National Long-term Plan. Actually there were 20 million undergraduate students by the end of 2004, which is expected to reach 35~40 million in 2020 with a growth of 15~20 million. It means the scale of China’s higher education should be doubled in the coming 15 years. How to reach the goal? Of course it is possible to establish another 1000 universities in the coming 15 years. These sharp increases put a strain on educational resources and highlight the lack of classrooms and experienced teachers. These resources constrain forced many universities and colleges to expand and evolve beyond traditional classroom instructional methods. Table 2 Gross Enrolment Ratios (GER) in tertiary education, 1990 and 1997 GER (%) in 1990
GER (%) in 1997
World Total
13.8
17.4
More developed regions
48.0
61.1
Northern America
77.2
80.7
Asia /Oceania
30.3
42.1
Europe
of which:
34.5
50.7
Countries in transition
36.1
34.0
Less developed regions
7.1
10.3
Sub-Saharan Africa
3.0
3.9
Arab States
11.4
14.9
Latin America /Caribbean
16.8
19.4
Eastern Asia /Oceania
5.9
10.8
of which: China
3.0
6.1
of which:
Southern Asia
5.7
7.2
of which: India
6.1
7.2
Least developed countries
2.5
3.2
The figures are quoted from World Education Report 2000, UNESCO, Table 8 Enrolment (millions) and gross enrolment ratios in tertiary education, 1990 and 1997 (p116), the data for China do not include Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Available at http://www.unesco.org/education/information/wer/
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GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT TO EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY In the past few years, Chinese government has set up a lot of state-level projects, including The Project of New Century Educational Reform, The Project of Modern Distance Education, National Pilot Curriculum Sharing Project, and Developing Educational Technology Training etc. to encourage HEIs using ICT to improve the quality and extend the scale of higher education. Constructing 1500 National Pilot Curricula in 5 years (2003-2007) In 2002, China Ministry of Education (MOE) set up a national project called National Pilot Curriculum Sharing Project (NPCSP) with the target to construct 1500 national pilot curricula in 5 years (2003-2007) for improving the quality of curricula nationwide via curriculum resources sharing. The aims of NPCSP are to pop out the position of instruction in HEIs, to raise the instruction ability of teachers, to promote ICT application in methodology and resource sharing, and to encourage professors giving lectures to undergraduates and develop high quality curriculum. The candidates of curriculum are those with professors as the chief teacher, well designed content, flexible methodology, qualified textbook and excellent management. In addition, the candidates should be sharable in Internet, with demonstration in its own institution and in same type of courses outside its university. The curriculum should be constructed by the institutes, evaluated and recommended by education bureau at the provincial level, finally evaluated by the MOE; the qualified will be awarded with the title National Pilot Curriculum and given financial supporte by MOE. In 2003 and 2004, there were 151 and 300 curricula chosen through public appraisal respectively. Most of the chosen curricula are the best in their own fields and pilot their fields. About one third of them have some positive experience using networked learning in their curricula.
Teacher training for educational technology To improve the teacher’s ability to use ICT in instruction, a project on educational technology training for higher education teachers was initiated by MOE with a funding.( See: China Ministry of Education, Circular on Developing Education Technology Training for Teachers in Higher Education Institutions (Issue No. 79), Sep.2000.) This project was carried out by the Committee of Educational Technology Training (CETT) attached to China Educational Technology Association of higher education institutions (CETA). The training content includes some compulsory modules such as the basic theories of educational psychology and educational technology, instruction design, the ICT skills in searching online and preparing course materials, and instructional assessment, and some selective modules such as knowledge management in instruction, development of web-based curriculum, etc. In the past 3 years 127 universities has set up its training center under the instruction of CETT, over 12 thousand certificates awarded and over one hundred trainers were trained by CETT. Over 30,000 teachers have been trained by these training centers. A questionnaire survey, covering the understanding of educational technology and difficulties in the usage of ICT, content requirement for training, methodology and assessment of training, was carried out by CETT at the end of 2004. This survey involved 30 higher education institutions all over China, with 650 questionnaires sent out and 527 received. The targets of this survey were college staffs in three groups: teachers (in ratio of 49.5%), technicians (12.9%), administrators (18.8%) and others. For the statistical result concerning knowledge and skill of educational technology mastered by teachers see table 3. Table 3 the knowledge and skill survey mastered by teachers 4
Item no 1
Modules The philosophy and concept concerning modern education
Quite good
So-so
Not so good
49%
47%
4%
2
The theory of educational technology
25%
57%
18%
3
The knowledge of computer and basic operation skills
62%
35%
3%
4
Understanding Internet and the ability of accessing the Internet
45%
48%
7%
5
Information and resources searching online
51%
41%
8%
6
Usage of Audio-Video equipment in the classroom
48%
40%
12%
7
Usage and creation of presentation files
54%
33%
13%
8
Designing the multi-media CAI courseware
21%
36%
43%
9
Creating Web pages and Websites
21%
34%
45%
10
Image processing and animation
17%
42%
41%
11
The integration of information technology into curricula
21%
45%
34%
12
ICT in instructional management
15%
48%
37%
13
ICT in instructional assessment
12%
44%
44%
14
Use the modern e-office? instruments
45%
45%
10%
15
The ability to get new knowledge.
59%
35%
6%
From table 3, we can draw the following conclusions: (1)The requirements for educational technology training vary from teacher to teacher. (2)Most of the teachers have the basic computer operation skill, as well as half of them do not feel very comfortable to use audio-video equipments in the classroom. (3)A lot of teachers feel they are lack of development skills, such as multimedia CAI courseware design, website or web page creation, and image processing, etc. (4)A lot of teachers feel they have difficulties in using ICT in instruction, such as how to integrate ICT to their curricula, and how to use ICT in management and instructional assessment.
CHALLENGS IN POPULARIZING NETWORKED LEARNING Despite of ICT infrastructure well equipped, strong government support in educational technology, legible understanding about the impact of networked learning to educational system, the institutions and staff involved in network education and ordinary universities lack the appropriate knowledge for developing correspondence methods of instruction and organization that takes advantage of networked learning. Four factors impact the implementation of networked learning, i.e. (1) the task-focused activities, (2) appropriate resources to support task-focused activities, (3) learner’s strategy and learning support, and (4) obstacle of new assessment methods in traditional educational context. And here we think networked learning as: "learning and teaching carried out largely via the internet or web which emphasises collaborative and cooperative learning, online group work, interaction with e-learning materials and networked knowledge production.”(David McConnell, personal communication, 2005)
How to design and maintain task-focused activities? There is an important feature of design for networked learning – a feature which distinguishes it from traditional Instructional System Design. One should design good learning tasks instead of aiming to ‘design’ the learner’s activity, but see these as resources the learner uses in deciding what to do. The task does not prescribe the activity. (Goodyear et al, 2004) “Students will never do what we tell them; nor should they. Neither should we give them a blank canvas.” Combining this opinion with traditional design, we should design a kind 5
of special activities, task-focused activities. Networked learning adjusts to the essential learning methods in networked environment, but teachers lack necessary theoretical preparation and experimental experiences to take full advantage of these changes. In mainland China, when compared with K-12 teachers, university teachers have fewer motives for instruction reform, and their instructional activities are not well suited to students in cooperative learning and collaborative learning which networked learning might provide. At present, the main problem is that the teachers lack sufficient understanding of design for networked learning, though many do understand information technology capacity. And they have not acquired enough understanding of task-focused activities and the differences comparative to that in lecture-focused learning. So the urgent issue of carrying out networked learning is to put forward some case studies of networked learning with different types of tasks and activities. We acknowledge that it is certainly feasible to take one’s first steps as a networked learning teacher without paying much attention to design issues. One can, for example, make use of other’s ideas for learning tasks and one can use networked learning tools or environments supplied by commercial vendors and managed by one’s own university. But when preparing, say, a whole new course or programme of study, in which substantial use is to be made of networked learning methods, then the task begins to have sufficient complexity to warrant the careful planning and preparation activity that we call ‘educational design’.
How to design and recontextualising the online resources? Whilst teachers might be expert in designing lessons using offline resources such as reference books that have been written specifically with their teaching purpose in mind, the (re)use of online resources presents a new set of challenges. Often a resource that is discovered was not originally developed with the education of students as its aim, indeed it may be a serendipitous by-product. The task then for the tutor is to use the resource appropriately, by recontextualising it within an appropriate form of instructional design. The styles and organizing methods of learning resources in networked learning, which are flexible for the students to accomplish their learning task, involve many types of media and instructional designs, unlike the resources of e-learning almost in web forms. Networked learning resources need to be integrated with learning tasks in order to realize of their values. We need to collect and develop appropriate resources to match the learning tasks. Therefore, the flexibility of networked learning not only provides more choices for knowledge delivery and skill development, but it simultaneously brings more difficulties for resource development.
How to promote the level of learning strategy of students? It is also a challenge that gets students to adopt or use learning strategies that are different from what they are used to in the traditional didactic, lecture-based classroom. College students in Mainland of China have been receiving classroom instructional training using typical drill-and-practice models forcing them to over-rely on the requirements and demands of teachers (Robinson, 1999). Using the Learning and Study Skills Inventory(LASSI) (Weinstein & Palmer，1987), we have surveyed the students’ learning strategies in BNU and other universities, the average level of students’ learning strategies was not high. Nevertheless, American student scores exceeded ones those obtained by Chinese students, especially on the aspects of motivation and attitudes (Huang & Zhou, 2003). In terms of technology-rich environments, Chinese students are slow to take advantage of web-based learning methods and often fail to develop the learning skills that match this instructional organizing method (Zhou & Zhang，2001).
How to balance new evaluation of curriculum and the traditional one?
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Curriculum evaluation is an important regularized activity in China’s universities and colleges. Each curriculum needs to be evaluated in questionnaire survey at the end of semester by the official administrants of the university. The targets include all the students in the class of the curriculum, 2 or 3 colleagues familiar with the curriculum, and the teacher himself/herself. The questionnaire covers the overall curriculum evaluation and overall satisfaction from the students, and the detailed information including the appointed textbook(s) and reference books, the manner of lecture, tutorship, and explanation to emphases and difficulties in the textbook(s), etc. The result of curriculum evaluation is crucial to the teacher with influence to his/her salary and promotion. Despite of the functions of this type of evaluation in regularizing instructional process such as preparation for curriculum, review of students’ homework, and organizations of the classes, it is a constraint for changing the lecture-centered instruction to networked learning. One worries about any change, which might influence its curriculum evaluation result, in its instructional process. In despite of being inconvenient, it might be better that one applies for reforming curriculum and canceling the evaluation like this type before any transformation of the curriculum. So it is crucial to change the traditional method of curriculum evaluation in popularizing networked learning, and to balance the novel evaluation and the traditional one for the smooth transformation of education.
CONCLUSION As one of the largest and an economic developing rapidly country, China is facing the need of extending the scale of higher education. With ICT infrastructure well equipped and Internet popularized rapidly, and strong support in educational technology from the government, there is an opportunity to popularize networked learning for the aim of extending the scale of higher education and promoting its quality in some sense. It is well known that technology doesn't simply translate into new social practices and that the simple provision of access to materials will not be sufficient to ensure that they are taken up (Goodyear and Jones, 2003). The simple advent of new information and communication technologies and the Web cannot guarantee a successful integration of technological changes into new forms of education, even when supported by government policy. So there are four challenges faced by institutes and staffs in popularizing networked learning: 1) the task-focused activities, (2) appropriate resources to support task-focused activities, (3) learner’s strategy and learning support, and (4) obstacle of new evaluation methods in traditional educational context. Thus, as we become more experienced in using technology to support networked learning the focus of attention has moved from the technology itself to the pedagogy and now to the type of organisation(s) needed to implement effective learning.
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