Leonardo da Vinci IRL/97/2/650/EA/iii.2.a/FPC
Courses on the Internet: Surveys, Analyses, Evaluation and Recommendations
Chapter 2
Analysis of courses on the WWW
These products received the support of the Commission of the European Communities under the Leonardo da Vinci programme.
Distance Education International, Ireland
The Open University of the United Kingdom
NKI, Norway
TecMinho, Portugal
Chapter 2
Analysis of courses on the WWW
In this chapter courses on the WWW are analysed from the point of view of an EU Vocational Education and Training (VET) Institution, whether face-to-face or at a distance, which wishes to put some or all of its course profile on the WWW.
This analysis highlights issues that need to be addressed, and dimensions of training provision that are not characteristic of either face-to-face or distance training institutions.
The issues addressed are:
An established field
There is now little doubt that the World Wide Web is the most successful educational tool to have appeared in a long time. It combines and integrates text, audio and video with interaction amongst participants. It can be used on a global scale and is platform independent. While largely an asynchronous medium, it can also be used for synchronous events. It is not surprising therefore, that trainers, lecturers, distance education providers and teaching institutions at all levels are increasingly using the World Wide Web as a medium for course provision (Mason 1998).
By 1998 the provision of education and training on the internet and on the World Wide Web was already a mature field of distance training provision.
This was demonstrated by the first year of the European Commission project, Courses on the Internet: surveys, analyses, evaluation, recommendations (CISAER), published on the net at
http://www.nki.no/~morten/cisaer.In surveying and analysing training provision on the World Wide Web, this project carried out a series of eighty in-depth interviews in mid-1998, with world leaders in virtual education. These experts, from a wide range of countries, talked in long distance telephone interviews with confidence and expertise on issues of server provision, of kernel choice and of system design. They analysed changes in systems and systems design, when one moved from 200 students on the web, to 2,000 students on the web, to 20,000 students on the web.
There could be no doubt from these interviews and the surveys published on the CISAER website, that by 1998 training on the World Wide Web was a mature and professional field of provision, with its own rules, structures, achievements and literature.
This is surprising because Collis (1996) in her Telelearning in a digital world: the future of distance learning was able to identify the origins of this field of training provision, to the period from late 1994 to early 1995.
By 1997, Fritsch, in Germany, had started the analysis of a new training market. He identified students who:
It seems remarkable that, by 1997, there was a new market of persons who spent most of their day in front of a computer screen and wanted to be trained in front of their screen too.
Systematic evaluation began early too. Boshier, a professor of adult education at the University of British Columbia, tells how he led a team of researchers to comb the web between 15 February 1997 and 10 April 1997 for courses. His findings, already published in major articles in Distance Education in 1997 and 1998, under the jazzy titles 'Best and worst dressed web courses: Strutting into the twenty-first century in comfort and style' and 'World Wide America? Think globally, click locally' state:
Web courses are constructed as the answer to fiscal crises evoked by neo-liberal restructuring. They are also touted as an anarchist exemplar of 'de-schooling' as envisaged by Ivan Illich. The trouble is, some courses are vastly under-dressed and merely attempt to display a face-to-face course on-line. At the other extreme are those laced with links, animation and more than enough glitter and glam to make Liberace wince. In this study the authors employed a 43-item coding schedule to examine the accessibility, opportunities for interaction and attractiveness of 127 courses on the web (1997:327).
and:
The web assists the globalisation process but, as Canadians, we are apprehensive about US dominance. The problem will partly be overcome as more non-American sites are posted and search engines deployed. In the meantime, educators outside the US committed to building their own nation and preserving its culture and sense of itself, should think about how to develop local Web resources so as to rely less on the US (1998:121).
Theoretical and academic foundations
The theoretical analysis and academic foundations of the new field of web-based distance training were being analysed in a number of Listservs. In the preparation for this report about 10,000 contributions to the Distance Education On-line Symposium (DEOS), a Listserv hosted on a server at Pennsylvania State University, in America were studied.
This Listserv received about thirty emails per day during the period mid 1998 to mid 1999. All of them were about distance education, and a considerable number of them were on web-based training. Most were well informed, most were American. Although they focused on the electronic developments of distance education, including education by satellite and education by videoconferencing, a considerable and growing volume were on education on the World Wide Web.
Contributors discussed, with technical and didactical competence, a range of issues which, in the period mentioned, contained these threads:
The theoretical underpinnings of training on the web are already being developed on the net.
Relations with distance training
Is the new area of web-based training to be regarded as a form of conventional education, or a form of distance education, or does it constitute a new sector of educational endeavour and a new field of educational research?
The position taken up here is that web-based education is best regarded as a subset of distance education and that the skills, literature, and practical management decisions that have been developed in the form of educational provision known as 'distance education', will be applicable matatis mutandis to web-based education. It also follows that the literature of the field of educational research known as distance education, is of value for those embarking on training on the web.
Not all would agree.
In her Telelearning in a digital world: the future of distance learning, Collis sees the WWW as an innovation in education worldwide in which children in schools will be taught on the web, students who travel daily to universities will be taught on the web as well as, or instead of, the lecture theatre, students at work will be taught on the web, students at home will be taught on the web, and students globally will be taught on the web.
In spite of the position of Collis and others who share similar positions to hers, it is considered here that the legal distinctions outlined here should be decisive. A student either contracts with a conventional school, college, or university to attend that institution, to join its community of students, and to receive its certificate or diploma or degree. Whether this student receives the qualification by attending classes or lectures, working in the library, or the laboratory, or at a computer screen, or on the WWW, depends on the legal requirements stipulated in the statutes of the institution.
Distance education is different. The student legally chooses not to attend the institution, or is unable to (for example, if in prison), or chooses not to (for example, if disabled), and requires the institution to award him or her its certificate or diploma or degree without joining its community of scholars. In distance training, there need, in fact, be no physical institution for the student to attend because the educational environment, in which the teaching-learning interaction, which constitutes the education process, is artificially, created.
Whether this student receives the qualification by studying printed materials, or audio materials, or video materials, or computer materials, or on the WWW, and whether the student studies at an airport, or at home, or at work, and whether communication between students is compulsory or optional, face-to-face or electronic, depends on the didactic and administrative decisions made by the institution.
The structures presented in this CISAER final report might be presented diagrammatically thus:
Relationship between web-based training and distance education
In spite of the possibility of synchronous WWW didactic interactions, it is considered that web-based training is predominantly an individual-based form of educational provision. In spite of the possibility of full-time, on-campus students using the web for part of their degree, it is considered that web-based training can be accommodated within the existing structures of distance training. There appears to be no necessity for the development of a new sector of educational endeavour or a new field of educational research.
Quality of provision
In early 1998 newspapers worldwide carried an article claiming that 'web-based training is better than traditional training'.
Reuters had syndicated an article about the research of Professor Jerald G Schutte of the California State University on web-based training. Professor Schutte had proved, the press reported, that students on the web score 20 per cent better than students in traditional universities.
Professor Schutte reports his finding thus:
Students in a Social Statistics course at California State University, Northridge, were randomly divided into two groups, one taught in a traditional classroom and the other taught virtually on the World Wide Web. Text, lectures and exams were standardised between the conditions. Contrary to the proposed hypotheses, quantitative results demonstrated the virtual class scored an average of 20 per cent higher than the traditional class on both examinations. (
The syndicated report was widely used, and is often referred to, because of its striking claims.
Other claims abound:
If the growing numbers of educators, book publishers and entrepreneurs are right, going to school will increasingly mean going online because training and education are already booming on the Web.
While entertainment-oriented Web sites continue to wrestle with revenue models, educational sites are providing a familiar service, only improved by the Web's inherent advantages in terms of geography and time. Students can learn whenever they want, wherever they want, and only what they want. (http;//www.webreview.com/97/01/31/feature/index.html).
These presentations carry forecasts and threats that either or both conventional education and distance education is about to be swamped by web-based education. Invariably these claims show little or no familiarity with the literature, little or no familiarity with educational success or failure at a distance in the past, and little or no research to justify the claims made: but they can be highly influential. Placing these claims in the context of the distance training literature gives a framework for evaluation.
Online or virtual or internet or WWW?
Should internet courses be referred to as online courses or virtual courses or internet courses or web-based courses or some other terminology? These different terms suggest different approaches.
Online courses is a popular term except in those countries where online students must pay money to their telecom for every minute that they are online. The thought of mounting telephone bills, plus VAT, makes the possibility of studying online unattractive.
A virtual training system, or virtual university, comprises an electronic classroom from which the class is taught, a network of electronic classrooms at which the students are present, and the satellite, microwave or cable linkages between them.
Courses on the net predated courses on the web. In their simplest form at the start of the 90s they comprised printed materials posted to the students, plus an email address for student to institution communication. Other possibilities (some of them not very feasible) which would be internet, but not WWW, courses include:
Web-based courses would normally have at least one of these facilities web-based:
Thus a web-based course can be defined as a course that uses the WWW of which the basic component is the web page. In a training course this could be either basic html, or forms using CGI, or the possibility of links, or the possibility of plug-ins (Director, Acobat, Powerpoint), or the possibility of other multimedia.
The course, therefore, is accessed through a WWW browser. This raises the question of how the course gets to the browser. It could be via the internet, or on a CD ROM, or by an intranet, or data line.
Types of provision
In the development of the TeleEducation, New Brunswick database of online courses, McGreal (1999) performed a useful function by publishing on the web his categories for inclusion and exclusion. He analyses seventeen types of online course.
His database is built from courses that can be followed completely online. Excluded are courses that:
This does not mean that all course materials need to be online. Like any distance training course, books, CD-ROMs, video and/or audio and laboratory materials can be shipped out to students and examinations taken at local institutions or testing centres.
Within this context McGreal presents his list of categories of courses and programmes on the internet as a continuum.
Courses with no, or limited, availability for distance training:
The first six groupings represent the majority of courses at present advertised as available for study on the internet. They do not qualify for inclusion in McGreal's database. All require residency, either on a university campus or at a learning centre.
The virtual university in Barcelona, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, is excluded because of its compulsory attendance stipulations Many universities in Finland, Sweden and Denmark claim that their WWW courses are under represented in this database, but this is due to what promoters of the web call 'the old, elitist requirements of European universities' to require compulsory attendance.
Correspondence Courses (print, audio and video tapes, software)
These also would not be included in the TeleEducation database, as they are not available online. Thus most open university courses and most proprietary distance training courses do not figure because, strangely, they do not allow, or do not as yet allow, email assignment submission and/or interaction.
McGreal's database is therefore built up of his categories nine to seventeen (and the preceding categories 1 - 8 are not included).
Online distance training courses
Computer-Mediated Conferencing (CMC)
These courses often include texts and sometimes include audio/video tapes, and computer software possibly including computer-based training courseware. Students may need to download and install client-side software to participate. Here, asynchronous communication is available with discussion packages, Listservs or bulletin boards.
Hypermedia on the World Wide Web
These courses can be followed online on the World Wide Web. They take advantage of the links to other relevant sites using subject trails and other techniques. These courses can be either text-based, and so available to students with low bandwidth connections, or they can include graphics and animations, that require a more powerful computer and higher bandwidth. This grouping includes synchronous communication.
It is important to realise that McGreal's categories, like the rest of the analyses in this report, are non-judgemental. Analysis of provision is presented. There is no value judgement that one category is superior to another.
Various permutations of the taxonomy described are possible. For example any multimedia web course might also have a text component. A CMC course could have some hypermedia links and workbook. A print-based course could incorporate some multimedia courseware on a CD-ROM with hyperlinks to the World Wide Web.
Classification of the CISAER study
It is felt the McGreal's seventeen levels of training online is an excellent tool, but too complex for practical web-based training management. For readers who are new to the field, or for distance training institutions thinking of putting their courses on the web, a simpler classification is needed.
In what follows five categories of web-based training are proposed.
Classification 1 Courses on the Internet
Technical provision
Only publicity or information is on the WWW. No didactic use of http/html pages. Email provision. Student has no ISP link.
Didactic provision
Courses are developed and sent to the student on paper, or by CD-ROM, or by modem. Email contacts provided. Many US virtual universities and online corporate universities use systems similar to this.
Cost implications
Costs are incurred, as in any distance training system, for course development. As in any distance training system, there are costs for distributing the learning materials to students, and for student support services, including email.
Classification 2 WWW on Students' PCs
Technical structure
The system provides files or documents for students to download to their own PCs. Also email contact address for technical support on downloading.
Didactic provision
This classification makes didactic use of the WWW. Learning materials are on the WWW and are downloadable. It is a form of electronic textbook.
Cost implications
There are some distribution costs. There are server costs and some technical support costs, and some costs for provision of email addresses. As in any distance training system there are costs for distributing the learning materials to students and for student support services, including email.
Classification 3 WWW Courses Online
Technical
Html material online. Materials structured to provide next/back and links to other materials. Graphics, questions and answers, assignment correction provided online.
Didactic
Materials are didactically structured and easy to follow. There is more structure for student progression, self-assessment and student interaction.
Costs
There are costs for webmaster, staff or consultant who can write html, PERL, and other scripts for passwords and for student interaction, graphics, and web design. Additional server space required and password controls.
Classification 4 WWW Multimedia Courses
Technical
A proprietary database management system, like WebCT, is purchased, or the system designs one. Audio clips, video clips, simulations and full interactivity is provided. The system has conferencing structures for student interaction. May support videoconferencing with white-board facility.
Didactic
The system provides didactic interactivity. There is an increased range of student content, images and course type. Increased provision of student results, testing, tutoring and counselling.
Cost implications
Larger server costs for a server system of at least three servers. Automatic maintenance costs. Further costs for email, tutoring and student correspondence as in any distance training course. Development costs for course material.
Classification 5 WWW Dynamic Multimedia Courses
Technical
Dynamic course content; Java; advanced simulations; large database construction.
Didactic
Creation of an online community. Possible to address individual preferences and needs. Sophisticated course content and presentation.
Cost implications
High-end server for database. Java specialist needed and full-time maintenance staff. System is in charge of its own server. Regular upgrades of database software to ensure speed and stability. As in any distance training course, there are costs for distributing the learning materials to students, and for student support services, including email.
Server provision
Training on the web provides new challenges to training providers, whether they train face-to-face in training centres or colleges, or whether they teach at a distance.
They are faced with a range of technical issues and computing strategies with which training institutions may not be familiar, and for which the qualifications of staff and management may be insufficient. They are faced with a shift from didactic to technical emphasis for which they may be unprepared. To have a training system, with student interaction and recording of student data, on the web, institutions are faced with three areas of decision making:
The answers will vary for systems with:
The issues on server provision mean a choice of:
Renting space on a server.
At the time of writing, and from certain suppliers, one can get 100 Mb for e 100, plus a monthly rental fee of e 25. For a larger system 1 gb can be purchased for an initial e 500, plus the monthly fee.
The advantages are that one has a system for little outlay, and limited backup responsibility for the institution.
The disadvantages are that it would not be fast and that, although the institution has an account on a box so do, perhaps, 1000 others. The needs of the others might get priority from the server owner and if the other renters should log on at the same time, the system will be too slow for its students. If the server crashes one might get it back up within two to three days. There is not enough power or complexity for the students, and this solution should not be considered for 2,000 or 20,000 students.
Lease a server
One can lease a server from a provider like Digiweb. At the time of writing, and from certain providers, one pays e 500 for the domain name, and e 250 per month leasing fee, with adequate technical support provided by the server provider plus additional technical support from one's own system. A suitable solution for 200 or 2,000 students.
Buy a server or a set of servers
At the time of writing, and from certain vendors, the server hardware could cost from e 2,000 to e 15,000, plus the e 500 subscription for the domain name, plus a budget of e 15,000 per year for maintenance with a dedicated staff member, or members, providing continuous technical support.
This solution is suitable for 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 students. Renting space on a server cannot reasonably handle 20,000 students. 20,000 students on a leased server(s) could be done, but costs can get very high.
For a system of 20,000 students a training system cannot afford reliance on a provider, however competent. There would, in any case, probably be problems with the leasing company who would want to know what was all the traffic on their server. As most server leasers are American, and it is difficult to contact them before 08.00 their time, the leasing option can be problematical for non-American systems.
Kernel provision
Institutions faced with the decision to transfer some or all of their face-to-face and/or distance training provision to the web, face further choices on the shell or kernel to run their web-based training system. These decisions have far-reaching implications for the didactic strategies of the institution, and for the continuing costs of the training system.
There are three options:
Rent a kernel
This is the popular solution, with most major providers listing on their web site the universities and training institutions who have installed their system. Most systems, at the time of writing, are costed on a per student licence up to a certain total after which an unlimited licence is bought.
The advantages are that an institution gets a full training system with extensive functionality both for course development and student support services, plus a database for student records and interactivity. The costs and competencies for writing and maintaining the code for a complete system, and then continually developing it to meet developments in the market, will be beyond most institutions.
Adapting an existing kernel
Some commercial kernels can be customised and adapted to an institution's requirements. At the time of writing, some existing systems are claimed to be weak on audio, or video, or didactic quality. The advertised 'we will install your virtual university for you and have it up and running within twenty-four hours' may not suit all institutions.
Despite the fact that two of the current leading kernels are Canadian and Irish, much of the didactic structure is highly americanised. Quizzes and chats are not everyone's concepts for university degrees. Excellent software is constantly coming on the market, but may not be included in the kernel purchased.
Develop one's own system
A number of issues might suggest a university or training institution would write, develop and maintain its own system.
A university may claim it was already teaching on the net before the major proprietary systems became available, or its Senate may claim that the university's charter did not envisage using some other university's system to teach. The functionality of proprietary kernels may not be adequate for local needs.
Systems that have the potential to move beyond 10,000 students will consider their own system. Major universities already have a look and feel to their web presence, and may insist that their courses on the web follow this design. Some proprietary kernels are not easily customised.
Leading kernel providers today
When the choice is to purchase a proprietary system, the institution needs to evaluate the range available. In-depth and balanced evaluations can be found on the web, but the range of criteria chosen in the reports may not be identical to the institution's needs. For instance in 1999 at http://www.umn.edn/ the University of Minnesota provided an evaluation of the Academos, ClassWeb, TopClass, WebCT systems, against these criteria:
A major additional factor is cost. Some months later the market leaders appeared to have changed, with Lotus Notes joining TopClass and WebCT in a leading group for some evaluators.
Student access
The Norwegian scholar, Paulsen, sums up the discussion on the identity of courses on the web at
http://www.netskolen.com/kurs/0000-spice.homeside.html:There are many terms for online education. Some of them are: virtual education, Internet-based education, web-based education and education via computer-mediated communication. This program uses a definition of online education, which is based on a well-known definition of distance education. Hence, online education is characterised by:
He adds his views of what web-based courses should strive to achieve:
The program offers online education via the internet. It emphasises independence of time, space, and pace; features that are among the most cherished in online education. Hence, the program accepts continuous enrolment, individual progression, and single course enrolment. This means that students can enrol whenever they want, they can decide their own progression schedule, and they do not need to enrol for more than one course.
Paulsen indicates student access advantages thus:
All courses are offered online. This means that there is no need for students to travel or take part in any face-to-face sessions as long as they have access to the internet. All course communication could be conducted online via email and discussion forums. Further, the program emphasises asynchronous communication. Hence, there is no need to attend classes scheduled for certain days or specific hours. Further, the study guides are developed as web pages, which include course material, assignments, and links to international resources.
Design of a kernel
The first stage for a distance training system which wishes to teach on the WWW is to acquire a kernel, that is a system for developing WWW courses, offering them to students on the WWW, and teaching the WWW students with, ideally, a database for student records and results.
To be effective as an internet application that would be fully successful as a distance course delivery system, the kernel should have a range of features: these will mirror the course development subsystem, the student support subsystem, and the student administration subsystems of a typical distance training institution.
Kernels can either be purchased, leased or developed by the distance training institution itself.
Among the range of features the kernel system should have one would expect to find:
Thus a kernel comprises a range of didactic and technical services needed for a web-based training system.
The services provided by the kernel are taken into the kernel domain of the institution.
Then the kernel implementations are used to develop the courses and the courses are taught to students.
This might be represented diagrammatically thus:
Design of a kernel for a web-based training system
This model of a completed kernel can now be compared with other kernel solutions.
Typical kernel solution: WebCT
There are a range of commercial kernels on the market including First Class, WebCT, TopClass and others.
At the time of writing, the WebCT kernel, developed by Goldberg at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, is popular with distance training systems.
It is appropriate, therefore, to analyse the WebCT kernel and contrast it with the kernel outline provided here.
A screenshot of the WebCT kernel is provided by Goldberg at
http://www.webct.com/webct/map/imagemap.html:
Design of a kernel for a web-based training system: WebCT solution
It can be seen that at the heart of the WebCT kernel is the homepage from which a close link is established to the toolpage.
Briefly, the homepage deals with the content of the course and the toolpage deals with the administration of the courses.
The homepage is developed by a series of:
In distance education terms, these provide the course development part of the distance education didactic process.
The paths lead from the homepage to the content of the course and to practical or laboratory sessions.
The HTML pages provide the content of the course (lectures) and the content of the practical sessions (laboratories).
The page specific tools provide the functionality for the html pages of the lectures:
The homepage leads directly to a further range of functionality:
The toolpage leads to a range of global tools:
In distance education terms the toolpage could be considered to represent the student support services.
Buying a system
If you go to a WebCT shop you will find several different UNIX versions and an NT version. You download a single compressed file to suit your system.
WebCT is not available on CD-ROM as it is a web product and is not designed for CD usage.
You download it, then you decompress it, then you install it with its own install program, and then off you go.
Typically it is a compressed file of 12 Mb and can take about two hours to download. Decompressed it might be between twenty and thirty Mb.
When you have used it to develop your course and if you try to use your course or to enrol students a warning says that 'is a non-licensed version'.
You then buy a licence.
Running a system
The major technical problem of a web-based training system, apart from bandwidth, is the design, structure and security of the management system. For any large number of students the database is crucial.
The central system problem is storing data and getting it back. This means adding students, deleting students, assigning different functionality to different students.
Thus the kernel is a database system and a management system, with the system design: the setting up of the files, directories and structures together with the records that are kept.
A successful kernel for web-based training will provide the two characteristic subsystems: course development and student support services, with the course development process usually being completed before the course is studied by students. The student support services half of the process is the structures that the institution puts in place to support the student from enrolment to examination, and for the avoidance of avoidable drop-out.
It is claimed that it is the provision of both subsystems, the course development subsystem and the student support subsystem, that distinguishes distance education from self-study, or study from CD ROMs, and which justifies the awarding of university degrees and nationally recognised training diplomas and certificates by distance education institutions.
Goldberg's WebCT design corresponds with precision to these concerns. The homepage with its Notes path and Lab path is analogous to the course development subsystem of a distance training design. It has rich functionality and provides, not only Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture n, for the content of the course, but also Lab 1, Lab 2, Lab n, for practical applications and exercises on the content.
The toolpage, on the other hand, gives and implementation of the student support services of a distance system and provides support for the student during the period of study. In spite of the use of terminology like 'chat' and 'quizzes', it provides the required creation of the educational milieu in which the teaching/learning process takes place, and justifies the award of degrees, diplomas and certificates for successful study on the web.
Thus a kernel for distance training is a set of servers which provide the various services required by the different kernel applications by using open source or purchased or home developed scripts and software.
Designing courses for the WWW
Institutions considering migrating their training from either face-to-face training in training centres or colleges, or from non-electronic distance training, will need to address a range of new didactic and technical issues, a selection of which are presented here.
Learning and design theory
The adaptation of learning theory to the student seated in front of his or her screen for the length of the training programme is a major concern. The presentation of the course content on the computer screen, and the application to training on the WWW of the findings of Schneiderman (1992) and others, on designing the user interface and strategies for effective human-computer interaction, raise important issues.
These include:
Schneiderman (1992:72) gives his eight golden rules for interface design as: strive for consistency; enable frequent users to use shortcuts, offer informative feedback; design dialogues to yield closure; offer single error handling; permit easy reversal of actions; support internal locus of control; reduce short-term memory load.
Hardware and software purchase
Distance training systems migrating to the WWW need decisions on the purchase or renting of servers; the purchase or design of kernels; staffing for system and/or server maintenance and for code writing or adaptation; choice of browser, email systems, bulletin boards, conference packages, multimedia on the web, streaming audio and/or video; database interfaces.
Student support services
Decisions need to be made, and systems established, for online or offline course advertising, student application, student enrolment, payment of fees, student counselling, student tutoring, resource facilities, library facilities.
Systems need to be designed for online or offline student interaction and for synchronous or asynchronous student events. Paulsen (1999) provides a useful summary:
|
Methods: |
One-to-web |
one-to-one |
one-to-many |
many-to-many |
|
Techniques: |
• On-line databases • On-line journals • On-line applications • Software libraries • On-line interest groups • Interviews |
• Learning contract • Apprenticeships • Internships • Correspondence studies |
• Lectures * Symposiums • Skits |
• Debates • Simulations or games • Role Plays • Case studies • Discussion groups • Transcript based assignments • Brainstorming • Delphi Techniques • Nominal group techniques • Forums • Project groups |
|
Devices: |
on-line resources |
|
bulletin board |
computer conferencing |
Dimensions of student interaction in web courseware (Paulsen 1999)
Student assessment
The goal here will be to provide assignment submission to the institution's server any time of day or night, any day of the year, Christmas Eve or Chinese New Year or Thanksgiving. Assignment correction will be immediate by the institution's computer systems at anytime of day or night or any time of the year.
The design of questions for web-based assessment is a specialised skill. One of the normal structures for assignments, that of ticking one of four boxes, needs scientific assignment design to achieve academic credibility. The best designs will set the students reflecting for twenty minutes or more, send them back to the course content, or to additional textbooks, before the decision on which box is the correct one to tick can be made.
Assignment feedback will be in the form of a personalised, customised letter to the student, praising his or her success, pointing out the reasons for error, and suggesting paths for further improvement. This feedback will be generated from data banks assiduously prepared and triggered by the varying results received by the system form the student. Government privacy legislation may block some of these procedures in certain countries.
Student interaction
Student interaction will be provided by email, bulletin boards, conference packages and threaded discussions. Shared computer applications, audioconferencing and videoconferencing are also possible.
The American use of the term 'chatting' for student to student interaction on the web seems unfortunate, as school students are normally punished for chatting. The emphasis on interactivity and alternative hyperlinked paths through courses and their justification from cognitivist psychology may also be misplaced. The main market for web-based training for adults off-campus will probably differ little from distance training: taxpayers who are fully employed and require the shortest path from enrolment to examination and have little interest in chatting.
Instructional strategies
The progression from face-to-face training, to distance training, to training on the web sees a focus on graphics, animation, audio and video, simulations, virtual worlds on the web, linked to non-web materials like textbooks, CDs, floppy disks and printed notes.
The use of (and purchase by the web-based training institution of the rights to) reference articles on the internet is a vital new institutional strategy for the web. Articles that, even five years ago, were essential course reading and had to be sought for by inter-library loan from obscure journals, can now be made available online to enrolled students and read on screen or printed out.
Security and firewalls
Institutions initiating courses on the web will need to pay close attention to security. Although it is true that some institutions, like the International Management College (IMC) of Buckingham, England put their courses on the net for all to see and study, most institutions password their courses and only issue passwords to students on the payment of course fees.
Security systems need to cover not only access to courses but also access to student records, results and interaction. Experience shows that students forget their passwords and multiple passwords for multiple enrolments in courses in differing areas cause logistical difficulties.
International corporations with heavily firewalled intranets and strict policies about the possibility of punching holes through their firewall to the internet, face further problems. Security provision for staff members from around the world to study on the web, must not lead the web-based students to sensitive data to which they would not otherwise have authorisation. If these corporations wish to sell their web-based courses to the general public, the firewalling problems become more acute.
Staffing
The distance training institutions moving to the web will need to hire or contract staff with new skills. Skills in HTML, PERL, CGI scripts, JAVA and JavaScript may be needed. Although small systems may run by renting a spot on a server from a server provider, and eventually a whole server, once the enrolment on the web goes beyond 10,000 the institution will need qualified technicians to purchase, configure and maintain their own servers.
Similarly a small system may run on a kernel like WebCT or TopClass or the range of other proprietary kernels available, but systems with 10,000 students on the web will probably want to design, trial, and maintain their own system with their own staff.
Remuneration of staff in web-based systems has been a frequent thread on Listserv discussions. The recurring distance training problem of who decides the final format of the course, the academic or the television producer (where the academic is not the producer) can rear its head again; as can the problem of whether they both get paid the same. Copyright and intellectual property ownership rights may be even more important than in distance training.
Solutions
Distance training institutions will find on the web a rich variety of virtual training and virtual university courses, which address the concerns listed above and provide models for analysis.
A screenshot of a recent course on information and communication technologies for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) called Communication for the New Millennium is given as an example:
Example of a web-based training course
A recent analysis by Collis and Peters (1999) sees asynchronous video on the WWW as a solution:
From the perspectives of efficiency and flexibility, the capability now becoming increasingly available for compressing and streaming video and making the video available via an ordinary WWW browser (with appropriate viewers) is a major step forward in overcoming usage problems. Assuming the video segments are available, and copyright issues one appropriately handled (the same problems that confront video use in videotape or CD ROM form), the segments can be accessed via a WWW browser using streaming technology from wherever the user has adequate network access, and whenever the user wishes.
In training on the WWW, the solutions for young students with high technology, enrolled on-campus, may differ from the busy adult at home or the manager studying in her office.
Individualisation
Some scholars see in distance training on the WWW a possible solution to the age-old problem of streaming: teaching students of differing abilities in the same group so that, frequently, weak students learn less than they should. They want the course to be individualised at the student's browser, so that each student downloads a different course attuned to his or her individual needs.
When distance education systems are linked to advanced level computer facilities, the individualisation of student learning can finally be addressed. Institutions can build a picture of the characteristics of the student from the enrolment forms, from interviews, from communications, from tests taken, until it has a comprehensive analysis of the individual capabilities of the students.
The institution then can write each paragraph or section of the next course at three or more different levels. When the different versions of the course are fed into the computer, it is possible to punch out multiple versions of the same course for the same award, adapted to the needs of the individual student.
Language learning skills impact greatly on the ability of students to learn. In online distance training, however, it is possible to take a 100-word sample of a student's linguistic ability and sample it against the lexical coefficients of the national language thesaurus to punch out courses which eliminate vocabulary that is not within the student's range.
A killer application (Collis 1995)?
In 1976 Hawkridge published an article on the evolution of the replacement of the teacher by the teaching machine, under the dramatic title 'Next year, Jerusalem! The rise of educational technology'.
The author traced this development from programmed learning machines, to the systems approach to learning, to audio-visual aids, to multimedia systems design. Will the web provide the ultimate teaching machine? Do virtual students teach themselves? Is the WWW a final solution? These are the questions that distance educators need to address at the turn of the millennium.
Any evaluation will have as its background the failure of many of the technologies proposed for distance training in the past, to deliver cost-effective course enrolments for distance systems which make money. The impact of the new mobile telephone and computer structures on the net and the web will be crucial in the early years of the new century. The swing towards group-based solutions with the electronics technologies of the 1980s may swing back towards the student as an individual studying alone on the World Wide Web.
CISAER course characteristics
The role of web-based training as part of this sector of VET training at the start of the new millennium is already impressive. It is as well, however, to have a clear concept of what is being discussed when one talks of 'training on the web', as McGreal's seventeen categories show. The position taken here is similar to that of McGreal:
The offering of courses for degree credit on the World Wide Web is a major development and the issue of its legitimacy justifies precise analysis.
Conclusion
One hesitates to use the term 'a paradigm shift' of the arrival of yet another new technology in a field where it has been frequently used of false dawns and Jerusalems still to come.
For distance training institutions and their staffs, none-the-less, there are serious challenges in the developments of training on the web. For the first time in the history of distance training, staff will be confronted with training provision for which a recent BSc in computing is more valuable that a degree or diploma in education and training. This is a paradigm shift.
References
Collis, B. (1996) Telelearning in a digital world: the future of distance learning, London: Thompson.
Collis, B. and Peters, O. (1999) 'At the frontier: asynchronous video and the WWW for new forms of learning' in G Weidenfeld et D Keegan. (eds.) L'enseignement à distance à l'aube du troisième millénaire. Poitiers: CNED
Hawkridge, D (1976) 'Next year Jerusalem. The rise of educational technology'. British Journal of Educational Technology. 6 -30.
McGreal, R. (1999) 'TeleEducation Database of Online Courses'.
http://cuda.teleeducation.nb.ca/ (1.12.1999)Paulsen, M-F, (1999) Courses on the World Wide Web.
http://www.nettskolen.com/kurs/000-spice.homeside.html (1/12/1999).Schneiderman, B, (1992) Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Reading Ma: Addison Wesley.