Course Outline

Introduction to the Course

Module 2: Design and Development of WWW Courses

Module 3: WWW Learners

Module 4: WWW Teaching Methods and Techniques

Module 5: Teaching Functions and Facilitation Techniques

Module 6: Assignments and Assessment

Module 7: Teaching Incentives and Barriers

Module 8: Administration of WWW Education

Course Glossary
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Introduction to the Course

by

Desmond Keegan

 

Welcome to your course on How to put courses on the World Wide Web.

This is a course developed in the context of the CISAER European Commission project for European trainers and training organisations.

 

The CISAER project set out to demonstrate that there is 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 Web as a medium for delivery.

Thus the importance of the field of training on the World Wide Web was heavily underlined by the CISAER project and the importance for European trainers and training organisations to get up to speed in this area of training provision is also an outcome of the CISAER project.

 

As a result of this the project partners NKI, Norway, Distance Education International, Ireland, The Open university of the United Kingdom and TecMinho, Portugal have provided this course of How to put courses on the World Wide Web.

 

Module 1 of your course gives an overview of education on the World Wide Web. It details the information necessary for European training organisations to confront this new form of training provision. It discusses the terminology and the providers of this form of education and training provision.

 

At the end of this module, you should be convinced of the importance for you and for your vocational training organisation to be ready for the migration of some or of all your institution courses to the World Wide Web.

 

Module 2 deals with design and development of World Wide Web courses, addressing issues such as the administrative choices, the course design, the communication distribution and presentation of materials for the design of new courses for the World Wide Web or the adaptation of existing courses to web-based provision.

 

Module 3 deals with the students and their needs and characteristics and just as a focus on student learning is essential for good course development and good development of student support services for students studying at a distance in traditional methods, it is just as important in provision of distance learning over the World Wide Web.

 

Module 4 deals with teaching methods and techniques for the presentation of your institutions courses on the World Wide Web. Of particular importance is designing interfaces for one to one, one to many and many to many interactions on the World Wide Web.

 

Module 5 deals with teaching functions and facilitation techniques for the World Wide Web. Especially important here are moderation, facilitation and activities for student success in training on the web.

 

Module 6 deals with assignments and assessments on web-based courses. A major goal here is for institutions to provide immediate feedback to their students on the World Wide Web as delayed feedback has been a criticism of distance learning programs in the past. With the advent of the internet it is possible for distance learning institutions throughout Europe to provide immediate feedback via the web to students who study at a distance.

 

Module 7 teaching incentives and barriers deals with workload and problems for staff teaching on the World Wide Web.

 

Module 8 deals with administration of student records on the web, the administration of teachers, the administration of courses, the distribution of learning materials. All of these are of increased importance for a face-to-face European training organisation or an existing distance training organisation, which wishes to migrate its courses to the World Wide Web.

 

The course ends with an extensive course glossary providing European trainers and training organisations with explanations of the terminology that will be met when teaching on the internet.

 

We wish you every success in your study of How to put courses on the World Wide Web and hope that it will contribute to your development and the development of your institution for confronting the challenges which face all training organisations in Europe in the twenty-first century.

 

Module 1: Overview of WWW Education

Module Objectives

• describe and discuss some of the past and current roles of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in education,
• identify the fundamental terminology, issues, values and principles of web education,
• describe and assess providers of web courses.

Readings

• Lieb, S. Principles of Adult Learning. (http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/

guidebk/teachtip/adults-2.htm)
• Sherry, L. 1996. Issues in Distance Learning. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 1 (4), 337-365. (http://www.cudenver.edu/~lsherry/pubs/issues.htm

Content

Online education is implemented in a very broad range of educational settings. It is used from primary education to postdoctoral studies. It is applied to on-the-job training, to distance education and as an adjunct to regular classroom teaching. A large number of subjects are taught online, and the online technology has started to influence traditional teaching and organization of educational institutions.

Online education often includes elements of adult education, distance education, and computer-mediated communication (CMC). Therefore online educators should be especially aware of issues, values, and principles related to these topics.

Adult Education

Since a large number of online students are adults, online educators should be familiar with the field of adult education. Adult students have knowledge and experiences, which can be of great value to the educational program. They also have special motives, needs, and responsibilities compared to younger students. In Principles of Adult Learning (required unit reading) Stephen Lieb presents some characteristics of adult learners. He discusses what motivates adult learners and which barriers to learning adults have.

Distance Education

Distance education is characterized by the separation of teacher and learner. In the article Issues in Distance Learning (required unit reading), Lorraine Sherry discusses the following issues:

• What is distance education?
• Theories and philosophies of distance education
• Systems of distance education
• Design considerations
• Methods and strategies
• Distance learners
• Operational issues
• Management and policy issues

Activity

Find and join some of the international online discussion fora about adult education and distance education. Share your experiences with your peer students.

Computer-mediated Communication

In online education, communication between people is primarily mediated by computers. This has technical, social, and psychological implications for the learning environment. Moses A. Boudourides has reviewed some of the implications in his paper Social and psychological effects in computer-mediated communication. The paper starts with a brief history of CMC and discusses the effects CMC has had on the learning environment, as well as identity formation and gender issues.

If you want to learn more about the history behind two of the first CMC-systems (PLATO and EIES), you might like to read the papers suggested for further readings.

Providers of Online Courses

There is a large and rapidly growing number of online courses. They are quite easy to find with Internet search engines. In addition, there are a number of online catalogues of course providers. One of these is shown in Figure 1. and more are available via the course's online resources.

Figure 1. Global Network Academy

In 1998-99,  an international analysis of institutions that offer courses on the web within the framework of the European CISAER project was conducted. During this work,  the following types of institutions that provide online education were identified:

• Universities
• University departments or centers
• Colleges
• Secondary education institutions
• Open universities
• Distance education institutions
• Virtual universities
• Consortiums
• Companies or corporations
• Organizations or associations

Glossaries of Pivotal Terms for Online Education

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 that is based on Desmond Keegan's (1988) definition of distance education. Hence, online education is characterized by:

• the separation of teachers and learners which distinguishes it from face-to-face education,
• the influence of an educational organization which distinguishes it from self-study and private tutoring,
• the use of a computer network to present and distribute some educational content,
• the provision of two-way communication via a computer network so that students may benefit from communication with each other, teachers, and staff.

• Computer-mediated communication (CMC): Transmission and reception of messages using computers as input, storage, output, and routing devices. CMC includes information retrieval, electronic mail, bulletin boards, and computer conferencing. CMC also comprises synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Information retrieval systems: CMC systems that facilitate searching for and retrieval of information.
• Electronic mail systems (E-mail systems): CMC systems that facilitate exchange of messages between individual users.
• Bulletin board systems: CMC systems that facilitate archiving and retrieval of messages posted by originators with write access and retrieved by users with read access.
• Computer conferencing systems: Computer-mediated group communication systems that archive messages so that they can be read and commented on by all members of a conference.
• Synchronous communication: Real-time communication.
• Asynchronous communication: Communication where the message is stored until the receivers find it convenient to retrieve it.

• Distance education: Teaching and learning in which learning normally occurs in a different place from teaching.
• Distance learning: Term often used as synonymous with distance education, not strictly correctly since distance education includes teaching as well as learning.
• Distance education courses: Structured programs of instruction for learners in a different place from the teacher, having learning objectives, one or more teachers, a medium of communication, and subject matter.
• Distance education system: All the component processes that result in distance education, including learning, teaching, communication, design, and management.
• Distance education Institution: College, university or school system organized exclusively for distance education.
• Distance education Unit: A special unit dedicated to distance learning within a conventional college, university or school system.
• Distance education Consortium: Two or more distance education institutions or units who share in designing distance education courses, teaching them, or both.
• Distance education Program: Distance education provided by same staff of a conventional college, university, school system, or training department whose primary responsibilities are classroom instruction.
• Course design: Setting learning objectives, choosing media applications, planning evaluation and preparing instructional strategies in advance of student recruitment.
• Course team: Group of specialists in content, instructional design, learning and technologies convened to produce distance education course.
• Technology: Mechanisms for distributing messages, including postal systems, radio and television broadcasting companies, telephone, satellite and computer networks.
• Media: Messages that are distributed through the technologies, principally text in books, study guides and computer networks; sound in audio-tapes and broadcast: pictures in video-tapes and broadcast; text, sound and/or pictures in a teleconference.
• Interaction: Exchange of information, ideas, opinions between and among learners and teachers, usually occurring through technology with the aim of facilitating learning.
• Instructors (also tutors): Specialists in learning who interact through technology with students as they learn content, usually designed by course team, though quite often by the instructors themselves.
• Counselors: Specialists in learning who help individual students with academic or personal problems that interfere with learning.
• Assignments: Work produced by students and used by instructors for purposes of interaction and also evaluation.
• Economies of scale: Effect on unit cost of producing large quantities. In distance education the larger the number of users of a course or the larger the number of users of the system, the lower the cost for each person.

Summary

Assignment

References

Module 2: Design and Development of WWW Courses

Module Objectives

• discuss student needs,
• assess the demands and constraints of WWW education,
• discuss important choices regarding the design of WWW courses,
• describe and evaluate the various WWW services that should be considered by course designers.

Readings

• Brown, A. 1997. Designing for learning: What are the essential features of an effective online course? (http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/ajet/ajet13/su97p115.html)
• R. Boshier, M. Mohapi, G. Moulton, A. Qayyum, L. Sadownik & M. Wilson. Best and worst dressed web courses: Strutting into the 21st century in comfort and style. Distance Education - An International Journal. Volume 18, Number 2, 1997

Content

In her article, Designing for learning (required readings), Allison Brown discusses the pedagogical rationale of an instructional design template developed at Murdoch University.

In the article Best and worst dressed web courses (required readings), Boshier et al. present the results of their analyses of 127 web courses with regard to accessibility, opportunities for interaction, and attractiveness.

If you want to know more about assessment of courses, you could read Derek Rowntree's article Designing an assessment system. The article is suggested as further reading.

The Environment

Teaching takes place in a system environment where administrative choices define the teaching context. Focusing on adult education, Donaldson discussed the environment in view of constraints, demands, and choices. He argued that program administrators should seek to:

...push back constraints, and work to have demands relaxed, thereby increasing the quantity, improving the quality, and expanding the types of choices available to them. (Donaldson 1990, 11).

The institution's timetables could place several restrictions on an online course. It is not always convenient for an online course to follow a university semester or term plan. In the same way, the requirements of a weekly course load could constrain a program. Some institutions may also require some sort of synchronous communication that further constrains a program.

Demands. National legislation and parent organizations form policies and procedures that cannot be ignored. There are demands for flexible learning, quality programming and healthy finances. Employers may have changing expectations regarding technology based learning and students may have changing learning preferences as they begin to have experience with online courses. Further, the local community, faculty, staff, and students all have demands on the program. These demands may, of course, be more or less rigid, but together they are an important element of the system environment.

Administrative choices. The administrative choices define the context in which the teaching takes place and set the premises for instructional design and teaching techniques. Bååth (1983, 272) identifies five factors to be considered in the development of distance education courses:

Harasim et al (1995, 141) state that designing "an online educational environment involves structuring conferencing by type of task, size of group, duration of task, and scheduling of task." Building on Bååth's factors and Harasim's design issues, one may argue that the administrative choices presented and discussed below are crucial to the teaching context.

Table 1. Administrative choices to be made in teaching systems

Target group. The choice of teaching techniques depends on the program's actual target group. Important target group characteristics are age, educational level, and student aptitude. The target group could be on primary level, secondary level, undergraduate level, graduate level, training level, and professional development or continuing education level. With regard to student aptitude and financial viability, the group's knowledge, motivation, financial status, and experience with computer-mediated communication (CMC) and computers may vary considerably.

Subject nature. Which discipline the subject belongs to, for example science, humanities or business studies, is an important aspect of the subject nature, and has implications for how we define course objectives. Of further importance to course objectives is the formal character of the program, which could be a diploma course, a credit course, a vocational course or a purely informational or leisure course.

Enrollment scale. The group size may vary from one to more than one thousand participants, but very few online courses have more than fifty participants. So far, we have very limited knowledge about how computer conferencing can be applied to mass education. We know, however, that computer conferencing systems can handle thousands of users.

Peters' (1983) applications of industrial theory led him to conclude that the structure of distance teaching is determined to a considerable degree by the principles of industrialization, particularly by those of rationalization, division of labor, and mass production; the teaching process is gradually restructured through increasing mechanization and mass production. At first sight, the theory of industrialization does not seem to apply to computer conferencing. Bates (1991) states:

Third generation technologies (computer conferencing) are particularly valuable where relatively small numbers of students are concerned, since they avoid the high fixed production costs of the industrial model, but they do not however bring the economies of scale of the industrial model, unless the opportunities for interaction for an individual student are dramatically curtailed. (p. 13)

Communication mode. In computer-mediated communication (CMC), one must distinguish between synchronous and asynchronous communication. In asynchronous communication, the message is stored in the communication medium until the receivers find it convenient to retrieve it. Synchronous communication, on the other hand, is inflexible, but allows people to communicate in real time, as they do face-to-face or on the telephone. Scheduling of synchronous communication varies in flexibility. A telephone conversation can be initiated without any prior schedule, but a videoconference must often be scheduled months in advance.

Distance education programs may allow students to communicate whenever it is convenient for them. Students may prefer to study during the weekends, after their children have gone to bed, during regular work hours, or whenever they have time available.

CMC can be completely independent of time. Ideally it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It gives instantaneous access to information whenever it is convenient for the user and there is no need to synchronize the operation among communication partners.

Scheduling. Pacing implies meeting deadlines for starting a course, for examinations, and for assignments. Deadlines, however, can be either flexible or rigid. They are flexible when students can set the deadlines, or select one of several deadlines. One example of extreme pacing flexibility is seen in correspondence courses that allow students to start and finish at any time. A more moderately flexible example is a course with multiple starting dates where students are allowed to enroll at a time convenient to themselves. Shale (1987, 32) asserts that "...standardized treatments (of pacing) could be applied to all students on an individual basis." He also suggests possible justifications for rigid pacing:

• to make the administration of a distance-learning system tractable,
• to express a commitment to a collectivist philosophy,
• to guarantee the credibility of examinations,
• to enhance student motivation through group activity, and
• to avoid procrastination. (Shale 1987)

Wells (1992) identifies three pacing techniques available to CMC. The first is group assignments that encourage coherent pacing within groups. The second is gating, a technique that denies students access to information before they have completed all prerequisite assignments. The third technique is limited time access to services such as conferences, databases, and guest speakers.

Our discussion shows that computer conferencing courses can be paced to a greater or lesser extent. Meaningful group communications, perhaps computer conferencing's major advantage, may, however, be hard to accomplish in an unpaced mode.

Media. Distance education programs can provide students with access to several media or sources of information: print, video, face-to-face meetings, computer conferencing, etc. This approach would support different learning styles and prevent exclusion of students lacking access to or knowledge of high technology media. CMC can easily and favorably be supplemented by or integrated with textbooks, audio and video conferences, computer-aided instruction, etc. and it is to some extent an administrative choice to decide how much a course should rely on CMC for communication and content delivery.

Course Design

So far, relatively little course material is designed especially for online education. Even though more and more courses are developed for the web, most of the content has been converted from existing articles, lectures or correspondence courses. It is therefore necessary to focus more on development of course material that better utilizes the opportunities of online education.

Before one starts to develop an online course, it is necessary to assess the students' needs and to weigh them against the available resources. Unfortunately, the development of online courses is often based more on an urge to experiment with available technology than on the students' factual needs. One could also argue that the development of online courses has often been supported by external research and development funding with little emphasis on cost effectiveness.

Many online courses are developed and taught by one online teacher. Such courses can be excellent, and the quality of the course material can be enhanced when it is published online. Other courses are developed by a course team that can comprise an author, an editor, an instructional designer, and a web designer. These courses are probably better and more expensive to develop than courses that are developed by a single teacher.

The web seems to be the medium that integrates all the services in online colleges. Text and multimedia material can be presented, distributed, and updated effectively on the web. In addition, the web provides a user interface for e-mail and conferencing systems, for administrative systems, and for computer-aided instruction. Still, we need to consider carefully what to use the web for. There is a danger that web-designers opt to offer all course material on the web, even though other solutions are better. In any case, all designers of online courses should consider the pros and cons of using the network as a medium for communication, distribution, presentation, data processing, and information retrieval.

Communication

Communication between people is usually both preferable and necessary to support the course material. Online education can include both synchronous and asynchronous communication. Synchronous communication takes place in real time, this means that those who communicate must be online simultaneously. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and videoconferences are examples of synchronous communication. In asynchronous communication, however, the messages are stored online until it suits the receiver to retrieve them. E-mail is an example of asynchronous communication.

Institutions that have a history of classroom teaching tend to prefer synchronous communication. Their world is the classroom, and they view the network as an opportunity to expand the classroom to remote areas. On the other hand, open universities and other providers of distance education with a tradition of correspondence courses may often emphasize flexibility of time and therefore focus on asynchronous communication. In my dissertation (Paulsen 1998), I surveyed 150 online teachers, and 4.7% reported that they applied synchronous communication, 52.0% used asynchronous communication and 42.7% used both.

Most online courses seem to offer both individual and group communication. Conferencing and collaborative learning are often heralded as important for learning, but the value of collaboration may vary with learners and course topics. There are many testimonies confirming that it is hard to achieve meaningful online communication in groups unless the activities are well integrated in the course design. In addition, many students wish to finish the course as fast and simply as possible without spending time and effort on group communication.

Distribution

Online distribution of course material can be cheaper and more efficient than sending the material by surface mail. An interesting consequence is that the course provider avoids printing and distribution costs, while the students must cover additional costs of online retrieval and local printing.

Another advantage with online distribution of course material is the possibility of continuous updating and improvement of the content. The updated material is instantly available for all students.

However, few students would probably prefer to read lengthy course material on a computer screen. Often, it is more convenient to print the material and read it on the bus or in the garden. This requires that the course designer aim for a reasonable quality and formatting of the printed material.

Presentation

One of the most conspicuous misunderstandings about online learning is that it is conducted entirely online. In fact, online students spend much more time studying textbooks and writing assignments than they spend online. Text and video may be presented on a computer screen, but paper is probably better for presentation of text and television is probably better for delivery of video. Still, there is a tendency to replace excellent textbooks with mediocre online articles and to convert fine instructional videos into lower quality online formats.

Course material presented online could include multimedia elements and hyperstructures that provide additional instructional opportunities. Hyperlinks could be applied to present explanations, alternative sources, or additional information for in-depth study. Animations and multimedia elements could be very useful to present and explain various tasks, behaviors, and processes. However, the course designer should be aware that the use of hyperstructures and multimedia elements introduces additional course material and that the students easily could be overloaded with information and work.

Data Processing

Course designers may utilize instructional software that is available online or installed on the student computers. Multiple-choice questions, simulations, balloting facilities, and search engines are examples of software that could be utilized for instructional purposes.

Some interesting examples of data processing designs are available via The Information Technology & Pedagogy Resources Site http://it-resources.icsa.ch/Introduction/NFIndexE.html) shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Excercise types on the web

One example of such data processing software is Test Pilot (http://www.clearcutsoft.com/TestPilot/), shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Test Pilot

Information Retrieval

Online education provides access to a host of online resources that can be of great value for a course. These resources could be used more or less deliberately to support learning. The resources can be provided and managed by the course provider or they could just be external resources that the course provider provides links to. In any case, course designers should be aware that online resources could include people, information and services. Further, the quality of the online resources may vary from erroneous, via irrelevant, misleading and insufficient, to excellent. Course designers and teachers have therefore an important role in guiding students to the most valuable resources.

Assignments and Assessment

Course assignments and assessment are of special importance in course design. Through well-designed assignments and assessment schemes, a course designer can stimulate collaborative learning and avoid excessive teacher workload. The assignments can be designed for individual work or for collaborative work. Further, they can be used to introduce project work, case studies, role-plays, discussions, and so forth.

Assessment can be done in several ways. According to Thorpe (1987, 11) the Open University, UK, used in-text questions (ITQs), computer-marked assignments (CMAs), and tutor-marked assignments (TMAs). Here, peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment.

In-text questions (ITQs) are developed for self-assessment. For example, they could include questions which ask the students to review, revise, or summarize what they have learned from the course material. The course material could also include suggested solutions and comments, so that students can evaluate their own work.

Computer-marked assignments (CMAs) utilize computer assessment. They are typically multiple-choice questions, and Thorpe (1987, 15) stated that over 90 percent of the CMA question sets at the Open University have been of the multiple-choice type. CMAs are well suited for CMC since both technologies are based on computers.

Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) are made for tutor assessment. These could take the form of an essay or an answer to a question. Thorpe (1987, 16) wrote that the TMAs were the most important elements of the continuous assessment part of all undergraduate courses at the Open University. Obviously, TMAs are a major contribution to the teacher workload, and should therefore be carefully designed with this in mind.

Peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment because CMC provides more opportunities for peer communication than the traditional distance education setting at the Open University as described by Thorpe (1987). Peer assessment can be both informal comments among students collaborating on an assignment and a more formal feedback on individual assignments.

Conclusion

A large number of online programs and courses will be developed in the near future. It is therefore essential that we develop, reinforce and disseminate knowledge and competence in online course design.

Courses should be developed according to the students' needs and the available resources. In addition, the course designers must consider which services to offer online and which services that are better offered otherwise. Finally, online course designers should pay more attention to how to provide cost effective online education.

Summary

Assignment

References

Bååth, J. A. 1983. A list of ideas for the construction of distance education courses. In Distance Education: International Perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 95-111. London/New York: Croom Helm/St. Martin’s Press.

Donaldson, J. F. 1990. Managing Credit Programs in Continuing Higher Education. Urbana-Champaign, Il: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Harasim, L., S. R. Hiltz, L. Teles, and M. Turroff. 1995. Learning Networks. A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge, Ma: The MIT Press.

Keegan, D. 1988. On defining distance education. In Distance Education: International Perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 6-33. London/New York: Routledge.

Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication. Ann Arbor, Mi: UMI Dissertation Services.

Peters, O. 1983. Distance teaching and industrial production: A comparative interpretation in outline. In Distance Education: International Perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 95-111. London/New York: Croom Helm/St. Martin’s Press.

Rekkedal, T. 1990. Recruitment and study barriers in the Electronic College. In The Electronic College: Selected Articles from the EKKO Project, eds. M. F. Paulsen and T. Rekkedal, 79-105. Oslo: NKI Forlaget.

Shale, D. G. 1987. Pacing in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 1(2):21-33.

Thorpe, M. 1987. Student activities. Epistolodidactica, the European journal of distance education 1987(2).

Wells, R. 1992. Computer-Mediated Communication for Distance Education: An International Review of Design, Teaching, and Institutional Issues. University Park, Pennsylvania: The American Center for the Study of Distance Education.

Rowntree, D. Designing an assessment system. (http://www-iet.open.ac.uk/pp/D.G.F.Rowntree/Assessment.html)
 
 

Module 3: WWW Learners

Module Objectives

• recognize the characteristics and needs of WWW learners,
• discuss learners' experiences of and attitudes towards WWW education,
• deliberate on the results of WWW learners.

Readings

Rekkedal, T. 1999. Courses on the WWW - Student Experiences and Attitudes Towards WWW Courses – II (http://www.nettskolen.com/alle/forskning/42/mmwwwev41.html)
 
 

Content

Student Needs and Characteristics

At one extreme, this sharing is so complete that it requires a group to decide everything that it does together. At the other extreme, the sharing may be implicit in the teaching-learning situation, as when many people flock to hear a lecturer. Those who attend vote with their feet, as the saying goes, and one cannot assume from their physical passivity and silence as they sit in the auditorium that they are not cooperating fully in their instruction (Houle 1984, 45).

Many students have full-time jobs and family responsibilities, and many are reluctant to participate if it means relinquishing high-quality family life and job achievements. They need flexible education: education that allows them to combine job, family, and education in a manageable way.
 
 
 
 

One may say that one person's freedom ends where another's begins, that one person's freedom to act infringes on the freedom of another. As Burge (1991) pointed out in relation to computer conferencing, "One person's time flexibility is another's time delay." The truth of this statement is hard to refute, but such negative consequences could be mitigated by reducing dependence on individual students and instructors. Coteaching, for instance, could reduce the response time since several teachers can access the system more often than one teacher can.

Linda Stilborne and Lindy Williams have written the paper Meeting the Needs of Adult Learners in Developing Courses for the Internet (required unit readings). They discuss aspects of adult learning that should be taken into consideration in the development of online courses. Based on adult learning theory, they claim that:

• adults must want to learn,
• adults will learn only what they feel they need to learn,
• adults learn by comparing past experience with new experience,
• adults need immediate feedback concerning their progress,
• adults want their learning to be practical,
• adults try to avoid failure,
• adults do not all learn the same way.

In an introduction to their online classes in Spring 99, Howard Community College, as shown in Figure 5, states:

Taking an online class has many advantages, including increased flexibility in completing homework assignments, the ability to communicate with your classmates and your instructor from the convenience of your own home or workplace, and enhanced access to written materials ranging from discipline specific internet resources to saved chats and instructor's class announcements. However, an online class is not for everyone. For instance, if you need the discipline of meeting on campus several times a week and you enjoy the in-person interaction between other students and your instructor, you are more likely to succeed in a regular class... (http://www.howardcc.edu/online/requir_courseofferings.htm)

is self-motivated (does not need a lot of direction, motivation from a teacher)

is self-disciplined (can budget time wisely and does not procrastinate often)

enjoys the challenge of learning on her/his own (likes to read and learn)

takes charge of her/his own learning (willing to ask questions and get help when necessary)

communicates well in writing

may need a flexible schedule but understands that flexibility does NOT mean the course will be easy.
(http://www.howardcc.edu/online/requir_courseofferings.htm)

Activity

Student Experiences and Attitudes

it is possible to achieve excellence in courses that are taught on the WWW

enrolment was facilitated because the course was on the WWW

they would enrol again in a WWW based course

they would encourage a colleague or friend to enrol in a WWW based course (Rekkedal, 1999)

Results, Grades, and Persistence

Figure 6. The No Significant Diffence Phenomenon

Bill Orr has compiled some references to articles (http://teleeducation.nb.ca/media/0594/billorr.shtml) that show the efficacy of new interactive media during recent years and newer studies. Similarly, it is not difficult to find assertions that online students do better than other students. One example, also referred to in Figure 7, was found at http://teleeducation.nb.ca/media/0297/betteronline.html:

EXPERIMENT SHOWS STUDENTS DO BETTER ONLINE A sociology professor at California State University at Northridge conducted his own experiment to test online learning, randomly dividing his statistics class in half, and teaching one half by lecture and the other half by Web assignments, online discussion groups and e-mail. The students who'd been banned from the physical classroom scored an average of 20% higher than those who'd attended in-person. "The motivation for doing this was to provide some hard, experimental evidence that didn't seem to exist anywhere," says the prof, who plans to expand his research to determine whether the online students performed better because they spent more time collaborating with their classmates, or because of the online format of the class. (Chronicle of Higher Education 21 Feb 97)

Results from final examinations are often used as evidence of learning. In the fall of 98, the NKI Internet College compared 1118 grades obtained by regular part-time students with 368 grades obtained by online students. The grades were given in seven courses in which the exams were identical for the two groups of students. The results confirmed a similar study of 1302 grades from 89 to 91. Both studies show that the online students have better average grades and a lower percentage of failing grades. This does not necessarily show that the online courses were better than the traditional part-time courses, but it shows that online learning seems to work very well for students who have chosen to study online.

Peter Cookson's article Persistence in Distance Education  reviews the research on learner persistence in distance education. It also summarizes how institutions can stimulate learner persistence and reduce dropout. In the article, Cookson (1990) suggested that the following 14 interventions may be considered:

Periodical redesign of courses and print materials. (Required Unit Readings)
In 1996, NKI conducted a study which showed that of about 1000 online courses students had enrolled in between 1987 and 1993, 81.3 percent were completed. It is not appropriate to make any firm conclusions from these data, but NKI has reason to believe that the completion rate of online courses is at least as good as that of other part-time courses.

Activity

1. Use the Internet and consult your peer students to find an online course you could analyze in all assignments throughout this course.
2. Conduct an e-mail interview with one of your peer students about his or her experiences of and attitudes toward online education.

Summary

Assignment

Consider including some paragraphs about issues such as student needs, characteristics, experiences, attitudes, course completion, and grades.

References

Houle, C. O. 1984. The design of education. In Selected Writings on Philosophy and Adult Education, ed. S. B. Merriam, 41-50. Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company.

Mason, R. and T. Kaye. 1990. Toward a new paradigm for distance education. In Online Education: Perspectives on a New Environment, ed. L. M. Harasim, 15-30. New York: Praeger.

Peter Cookson, Persistence in Distance Education (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Design/kn-01.html)

David P. Diaz, 1999.Profiling successful and non-successful Online health education students. (http://www.thegrid.net/dpdhp/pubs/profiles.htm)

Teacher Training on the Web: Diary of an Online Learner (http://www.globalstudy.com/xchange/020698.shtml)

RealVideo: The Virtual Campus – Attending College On Your Own Time & Schedule (http://www.newstream.com/98-411.html)
 
 

Teaching Methods and Techniques

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Module 4: WWW Teaching Methods and Techniques

Module Objectives

• discuss features of the four teaching methods: one-online, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many,
• know how to apply various online teaching techniques,
• discuss online teaching devices.

Readings

Paulsen, M. F. The Online Report on Pedagogical Techniques for Computer-Mediated Communication. (http://www.nettskolen.com/alle/forskning/19/cmcped.html)
 
 

Content

Teaching Methods

Activity on Teaching Methods

Teaching Devices

Let us use the CMC-classification derived from Rapaport (1991). There are four major CMC-devices: information retrieval systems, e-mail systems, bulletin board systems, and computer conferencing systems. These devices correspond to the four methods: one-online, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.

Activity on Teaching Devices

Teaching Techniques

The foregoing considerations result in a framework of four methods, four devices, and a number of techniques as shown in table 1. First, the techniques classified as one-online are characterized by information retrieval from online resources, and the fact that a student can perform the learning task without communication with the teacher or other students (e.g. search of online databases). Second, the techniques classified as one-to-one can be conducted via e-mail applications (e.g. e-mail based correspondence studies). Third, the techniques discussed as one-to-many will typically be conducted via the WWW, bulletin boards, or distribution lists for e-mail (e.g. publication of a lecture). Finally, the techniques presented as many-to-many can be organized within computer conferencing systems, bulletin board systems, or distribution lists for e-mail (e.g. debates).
 

Teaching Methods	Teaching Techniques	Teaching Devices
One-online	Online Databases Online Publications Online Software Applications Online Interest Groups Interviews	Information Retrieval Systems
One-to-one	Learning Contracts Apprenticeships Internships Correspondence Studies	E-mail Systems
One-to-many	Lectures Symposiums Skits	Bulletin Board Systems
Many-to-many	Debates Simulations or Games Role Plays Case Studies Discussions Transcript-based Assignments Brainstormings Delphi Techniques Nominal Group Techniques Forums Projects Student Presentations	Computer Conferencing Systems

Table 1. Teaching methods, devices, and techniques

Activity on Teaching Techniques

Definitions of Pivotal Terms for WWW Teaching

Summary

Assignments

References

Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication. Ann Arbor, Mi: UMI Dissertation Services.

Rapaport, M. 1991. Computer Mediated Communications: Bulletin Boards, Computer Conferencing, Electronic Mail, and Information Retrieval. New York: John Wiley&Sons.

Verner, C. 1964. Definition of terms. In Adult Education: Outlines of an Emerging Field of University Study, eds. G. Jensen, A. A. Liveright and W. Hallenback, 27-39. Washington, D.C.: Adult Education Association.

Nevin, A., S. Stutler, and D. Zambo. 1999. Lessons Learned while Team Teaching Using the Internet as an Instructional Delivery model. DEOSNEWS 9(8).
 
 

Module 5: Teaching Functions and Facilitation Techniques

Module Objectives

• identify issues that influence WWW teaching style,
• recognize and assess recommended moderation and facilitation techniques,
• discuss the organizational, social, intellectual, and assessment functions of teachers.

Readings

Rae Wahl Rohfeld, R. W. And R. Hiemstra. Moderating Discussions in the Electronic Classroom (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderate/rohfeld.html)
 
 

Content

...some conferences possess an energy that encourages active participation, while others, apparently designed to facilitate discussion of equally relevant and interesting topics, seem to spit and sputter, with minor flurries of activity and little of value to offer to the participant.... The important thing to remember is that a flexible approach to moderation is a key element in the creation of an energetic conferencing environment (Brochet 1989, 6.02-3).

Rather than professing general guidelines for facilitation of educational CMC, we shall in this course argue that the way teachers handle their teaching functions is influenced by their philosophical orientation and theory of education, and that they should be aware of their options with regard to facilitation techniques. Hence, the material we shall look at is organized and discussed with regard to philosophical orientation and theories of education, teaching functions, and facilitation techniques.

Teaching Style

Your teaching style is based on your philosophical orientation and your theories of education. In discussing adult education philosophies, Zinn (1991) distinguished between liberal, behaviorist, progressive, humanistic, and radical philosophies. These and other philosophies in adult education are presented in selected writings edited by Merriam (1984) and Jarvis (1987). An interesting online resource is The Theory Into Practice(http://www.gwu.edu/~tip/) database, shown in Figure 8, that contains descriptions of 50 theories relevant to human learning and instruction. With regard to distance education, Keegan (1988) identified three theoretical positions: theories of autonomy and independence, theories of industrialization, and theories of interaction and communication. Discussing these theoretical positions, Paulsen (1992b) presented a theory on cooperative freedom, which was a first attempt to establish a distance education theory attuned to CMC. In other words, teachers will perceive their functions in educational computer conferencing in light of their basic theories and philosophies toward education.

Figure 8.

Moderation and Facilitation

Effective facilitators know the student group well and persist in carrying the discussion onward. They are enthusiastic, both about the subject matter and computer conferencing. They are innovative and try new instructional techniques. They are flexible, allowing for changes in plans and circumstances. Finally, they deal with individual and group problems the class is facing (Eastmond 1992, 33).

Addressing facilitation of discussion in general, Brookfield (1991, 195) stated that "discussion is by its very nature unpredictable." He elaborates on this through five components in his theory on discussion leadership:

1. Be wary of standardized approaches. Every discussion group comprises participants with different backgrounds, personalities, and learning styles. So, no standardized approach can be presumed to be appropriate for all groups.
2. Use a diversity of approaches. It is recommended to have a reservoir of questions and discussion leads at hand to personalize the discussion.
3. Welcome the unanticipated. Discussion is always unpredictable and moderators should be ready to depart from the general line of discussion to follow up themes which arise unexpectedly.
4. Attend to the emotional dimension. Discussions can become competitive and emotional battlegrounds or highly personal fora for sharing of private thoughts. Moderators must be prepared to handle such charged situations.
5. Be authentic in the group. The most damaging mistakes moderators can make is to pretend to a personality they don't possess. It is far better for moderators to accept their personality and build on their inherent strengths.

1. The goal setter, who makes plans for the conference and decides whether the plans should be changed during the conference.
2. The discriminator, who differentiates between useful and useless ideas.
3. The host, who creates the feeling of trust and motivates contributions.
4. The pace setter, who removes communication barriers and promotes cooperation.
5. The explainer, who relays overlooked messages and raises questions that have remained unanswered.
6. The entertainer, who evaluates the conference mood and ensures that participants are relaxed.

Categories of Teaching Functions

Discussing group dynamics in general, Forsyth (1990, 112) classified the roles into two basic functions: task roles and socio-emotional roles. According to Eastmond (1992, 33), Feenberg (1986) proposed that CMC instructors must apply procedural and intellectual leadership. Combining Forsyth's and Feenberg's approach and focusing on computer conferencing, Mason's 1991 article on moderating educational computer conferencing identified three role functions that computer conferencing moderators must possess. Based on a literature review, Mason stated that:

The advice on tutoring skills for educational computer conferencing falls generally into three categories: organisational, social, and intellectual.

Organizational role. One of the first duties of an online tutor is to "set the agenda" for the conference: the objectives of the discussion, the timetable, procedural rules and decision-making norms. Managing the interactions with strong leadership and direction is considered a sine qua non of successful conferencing...

Social role. Creating a friendly, social environment for learning is also seen as an essential moderator skill. Sending welcoming messages at the beginning and encouraging participation throughout are specific examples, but providing lots of feedback on students' inputs, and using a friendly, personal tone are considered equally important...

Intellectual role. The most important role of the online tutor, of course, is that of educational facilitator. As in any kind of teaching, the moderator should focus discussions on crucial points, ask questions and probe responses to encourage students to expand and build on comments... (Mason, 1991).

A few authors (Eisley 1991, Feenberg 1989b, and Hiltz 1988) have discussed moderation of educational computer conferences in particular. Eisley's contribution was based on his experiences from a graduate program offered through computer conferencing at Boise State University. Hiltz' report was based on research on teaching in a virtual classroom through the EIES system at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Feenberg's perspective was derived from his CMC work at Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. In Table 2 and the following paragraphs, their recommended facilitation techniques are compiled and organized according to the four teaching functions; organizational, social, intellectual, and assessment. Several of the techniques may fit into more than one category, so the suggested categorization is meant to be a guide rather than a definitive classification. Further, some of the statements presented here seem to contradict each other, and others seem to be redundant. They are, however, included to indicate the array of recommendations available.
 

Facilitation techniques for organizational functions Spur participation when lagging Require regular participation Use response activities Move misplaced content Handle tangents appropriately Vary participation Let students conduct the discussion Give a decisive end to discussion Invite visiting experts Don't overload Read the status report daily Don't lecture Prompt frequently Use simple assignments Be clear Set up student interaction Synchronize and resynchronize Take procedural initiatives Remember the law of propornality (sic.) Be patient

Facilitation techniques for social functions Reinforce good discussant behaviors Discourage poor discussant behaviors Hang loose Be responsive Request meta-comments  Facilitation techniques for intellectual functions Summarize the discussion Write weaving comments Respond to student contributions Make the material relevant Present conflicting opinions Simulate an agent provocateur Be objective Expect less Don't rely on off-line materials Request responses Facilitation techniques for assessment Self-assessment Tutor assessment Computer assessment Peer assessment

Table 2. Some recommended facilitation techniques

With regard to the social function of distance education, Holmberg's theory of guided didactic conversation postulates that: "Feelings of personal relation between the teaching and the learning parties promote study pleasure and motivation" (Holmberg, 1988, 115). However, in discussing facilitation techniques for educational computer conferences, authors tend to focus on the organizational function of the moderator role. One may infer that this is because the intellectual and social functions are less influenced by the medium than the organizational function. Hence, the facilitation techniques discussed in the following demonstrate a preoccupation with the organizational function. The techniques are based on Eisley's, Hiltz', and Feenberg's personal experiences in specific contexts that may or may not be relevant to teachers in other contexts.

Facilitation Techniques for Organizational Functions

Require regular participation. To maintain an active dialogue, it is necessary to exhort students to log on at least twice a week. One feasible mechanism to handle this is the weekly quiz (Hiltz 1988).

Use response activities. The response activity feature of the EIES conferencing system was developed to force active participation. Here, each student must post a response to a question before access to the other answers is granted (Hiltz 1988).

Move misplaced content. Immediately move contributions under a wrong discussion heading (Eisley 1991).

Handle tangents appropriately. Refer inappropriate digressions to another conference, or guide the students back to the original topic (Eisley 1991).

Vary participation. Ask the overly outspoken privately to wait a few responses before contributing. In the same way, ask less outspoken individuals to participate more actively, and call on specific individuals just as a teacher might call on a student in a traditional class (Eisley 1991).

Occasionally have a student conduct the discussion. Students could take turns as assistant moderators (Eisley 1991).

Give a decisive end to each discussion. Conclude discussions that drag on after they have served their purpose. Such discussions will distract from other topics on which students should focus (Eisley 1991).

Invite visiting experts. Guest experts may join the conference, and students may be asked to present questions to the visitor (Hiltz 1988).

Be patient. Be prepared to wait several days for comments and responses, and don't rush in to fill every silence with moderator contributions (Feenberg 1989b).

Don't overload. Post about one long comment a day. If the students have much to offer, the moderator should contribute less so that the slower participants can keep up (Feenberg 1989b).

Read the status report daily. Don't let too many of the participants fall far behind (Feenberg 1989b).

Don't lecture. Use open-ended remarks, examples, and weaving. An elaborate, logically coherent sequence of comments yields silence (Feenberg 1989b).

Prompt frequently. Use private messages to urge participants to take part in the discussion, to initiate debates, and to solicit suggestions (Feenberg 1989b).

Use simple assignments. Don't be apprehensive about presenting assignments to the group, but keep the threshold of participation low (Feenberg 1989b).

Be clear. Begin with an opening comment that succinctly states the conference topic and the moderator's initial expectations and continue to clarify the topic and the expectations as the conference proceeds (Feenberg 1989b).

Set up student interaction. Encourage participants to address each other as well as the moderator (Feenberg 1989b).

Synchronize and resynchronize. Make sure everyone begins concurrently and offer periodic occasions to restart in unison (Feenberg 1989b).

Remember the "law" of proportionality. Recall that faculty generally contribute about one quarter to one half the online material (Feenberg 1989b).

Take the procedural initiative. Avoid frustrating procedural discussions by providing groups with strong procedural leadership (Feenberg 1989b).

Facilitation Techniques for Social Functions

Request change in poor discussant behaviors. For example, tactfully point out that the class should be more directly responsive to each other's comments (Eisley 1991).

Hang loose. Don't present an elaborate seminar agenda at the outset, just follow the flow of the conversation while guiding it toward the subject (Feenberg 1989b).

Be responsive. Respond swiftly to every contribution either by posting a personal message to the contributor or by referring to the author's comment in the conference (Feenberg 1989b).

Request metacomments. Invite participants to express how they feel about the course within the conference (Feenberg 1989b).

Facilitation Techniques for Intellectual Functions

Write weaving comments. Summarize the state of the conference every week or two as a means of focusing discussion (Feenberg 1989b).

Respond to student contributions and weave them together. It is not advisable to respond to each individual contribution; it is better to respond to several at once by weaving them together. Do refer to students by name (Hiltz 1988).

Make the material relevant. The course material could be made more relevant by developing questions and assignments that relate to student experiences and current events (Hiltz 1988).

Present conflicting opinions. Conflicting opinions could be exposed through instructors with different backgrounds, debates, and peer critique (Hiltz 1988).

Request responses. The instructor may ask individual students to comment on specific issues that are relevant to their specific backgrounds (Hiltz 1988).

Simulate an agent provocateur. By using a pen name, instructors can question or challenge their own entries. This device could be used to set up a discussion or to set an example for student inquiries (Hiltz 1988).

Be objective. Don't generalize about a conference without considering the contributions with regard to contents, author, and time of announcement (Feenberg 1989b).

Expect less. Be content if the moderator accomplishes to communicate two or three good major points in the course of a month of discussion (Feenberg 1989b).

Don't rely on off-line materials. The discussion must be largely self-contained to succeed, so summarize assigned readings online (Feenberg 1989b).

Facilitation of Assessment Functions

ITQs are developed for self-assessment. For example, they could include questions which ask the students to review, revise, or summarize what they have learned from the course material. As a guide to self-assessment, the course material could include suggested solutions and discussion of pitfalls.

CMAs are made for computer assessment. They are typically multiple-choice questions, and Thorpe (1987, 15) stated that over 90 percent of the CMA question sets at the Open University have been of the multiple-choice type. CMAs should be well suited for CMC since both technologies are based on computers.

TMAs are made for tutor assessment. These could take the form of an essay or a problem to solve. Thorpe (1987, 16) wrote that the TMAs were the most important elements of the continuous assessment part of all undergraduate courses at the Open University. Obviously, TMAs could be a major contribution to the teacher workload, and should therefore be carefully designed with this in mind.

Peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment in this study because CMC provides more opportunities for peer communication than the traditional distance education setting at the Open University as described by Thorpe (1987). Peer assessment can be both informal comments among students collaborating on an assignment and a more formal feedback on individual assignments.

Activity

Summary

Assignment

References

Brochet, M. G. 1989. Effective moderation of computer conferences: Notes and suggestions. In Moderating Conferences, ed. M. G. Brochet, 6.01-6.08. Guelph, Ontario: University of Guelph.

Brookfield, S. D. 1991. Discussion. In Adult Learning Methods, ed. M. W. Galbraith, 187-204. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Conti, G. J. 1991. Identifying your teaching style. In Adult Learning Methods, ed. M. W. Galbraith, 79-90. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Davie, L. 1989. Facilitation techniques for the on-line tutor. In Mindweave: Communications, Computers, and Distance Education, eds. R. Mason and A. Kaye, 74-85. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Eastmond, D. V. 1992. Effective Facilitation of Computer Conferencing. Continuing Higher Education Review. 56(1&2):23-34.

Eisley, M. 1991. Guidelines for conducting instructional discussions on a computer conference. In Applications of Computer Conferencing to Teacher Education and Human Resource Development, ed. A. J. Miller, 35-39. Proceedings from an International Symposium on Computer Conferencing at the Ohio State University, June 13-15.

Feenberg, A. 1986. Network design: An operating manual for computer conferencing. IEE Transactions on Professional Communication. 29(1):2-7.

Feenberg, A. 1989a. The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing. In Mindweave: Communications, Computers, and Distance Education, eds. R. Mason and A. Kaye, 22-39. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Feenberg, A. 1989b. The planetary classroom: International applications of advanced communications to education. In Message Handling Systems and Distributed Applications, eds. E. Stefferud, O. J. Jacobsen, and P. Schicker, 511-524. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Feenberg, A. 1991. CMC in executive education: The WBSI experience. In Nordisk Konferanse om Fjernundervisning, Opplæring og Dataformidlet Kommunikasjon, eds. A. Fjuk, A. E. Jenssen, P. Helmersen, and M. Søby, 95-100. Proceeding from an International Conference at the University of Oslo, August 19-20.

Forsyth, D. R. 1990. Group Dynamics. Second Edition. Pacific Grove, Ca: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Hiltz, S. R. 1988. Teaching in a Virtual Classroom. Volume 2 of A Virtual Classroom on EIES: Final Evaluation Report. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Holmberg, B. 1988. Guided didactic conversation in distance education. In Distance Education: International Perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 114-122. London/New York: Routledge.

Jarvis, P. 1987, ed. Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult Education. London: Routledge.

Keegan, D. 1988. On defining distance education. In Distance Education: International Perspectives, eds. D. Sewart, D. Keegan, and B. Holmberg, 6-33. London/New York: Routledge.

Kerr, E. B. 1986. Electronic leadership: A guide to moderating online conferences. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications 29(1):12-18.

Mason, R. 1991. Moderating educational computer conferencing. DEOSNEWS 1(19).

Merriam, S. B. 1984 ed. Selected Writings on Philosophy and Adult Education. Malabar, Fl: Krieger.

Paulsen, M. F. 1992b. The hexagon of cooperative freedom: A distance education theory attuned to computer conferencing. In From Bulletin Boards to Electronic Universities: Distance Education, Computer-Mediated Communication, and Online Education, M. F. Paulsen, 56-64. University Park, Pa: The American Center for the Study of Distance Education.

Thorpe, M. 1987. Student activities. Epistolodidactica, the European journal of distance education 1987(2).

Zinn, L. M. 1991. Identifying your philosophical orientation. In Adult Learning Methods, ed. M. W. Galbraith, 39-77. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Green, L. (1998) Playing Croquet with Flamingos: A Guide to Moderating Online Conferences. (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderate/flamingoe.pdf)

Effectively Using Electronic Conferencing (http://www.indiana.edu/~ecopts/ectips.html)

Survey Results - ANTA Online teaching & Learning Styles Projects. (http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/lsrsc/one/natproj/tal/survey/index.htm)

Online Exercises Systems (http://math.uc.edu/onex/demo.html)
 
 

Module 6: Assignments and Assessment

ModuleObjectives

1. understand and explain the implications of various types of WWW assignments,
2. discuss self-assessment, computer assessment, tutor assessment, and peer assessment.

Readings

Designing an assessment systemhttp://www-iet.open.ac.uk/pp/D.G.F.Rowntree/Assessment.html

Assessment. In, Production Handbook for Open University Courses and Packs. (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/management/teaching/ex-02.html)

Content

Assignments

Assignments are specific tasks (e.g. essays or problem sets) given by course designers or tutors at regular intervals throughout a course, as part of the overall assessment of students. Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley (1996) provide the following guidance on using assignments effectively in distance education courses:

Most formal distance learning courses involve a series of assignments, nearly always an essay or other written exercise, to be completed on a regular basis (e.g., every week or two) during the course. This structure serves not only to provide the student with feedback on progress but also to pace the student through the course. In general, setting assignments with cutoff dates motivates the student to keep up with the work, and helps to prevent them from dropping out. However, assignments are only effective if the student receives meaningful feedback from the instructor or tutor. If students only receive a grade or acknowledgment that the assignment was received, the utility and motivational value of assignments is significantly diminished. Instructional designers have to be careful not to overload students with too many assignments... (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Instruction/asgn-02.html)

They also tell us something of what students expect in terms of grading and feedback on assignments:

fair and objective grading

to have their work treated with respect

an explanation and justification of the grade awarded

a clear indication of how they can improve both in terms of specific responses to questions and in general

encouragement and reassurance about their ability and progress

constructive criticism and advice

an opportunity to respond if desired

a timely response (i.e., before the next assignment is due) (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Instruction/asgn-02.html)

Activities on Assignments

3. Assignments could be presented as individual tasks or group tasks. In this study unit you may choose whether you would like to write the assignment for submission alone or together with other students. What are the consequences of the two options with regard to learning and work?
4. In this study unit you are required to post your essay as e-mail to your teacher. Alternatively, the teacher could ask you to post your essay in the class forum. What are the consequences of the two different models?

Assessment

Assessment is a major concern in designing and running online courses, and Derek Rowntree has presented an overview of the main strategic issues in his article Designing an Assessment System (required unit reading). In the overview he focuses on the following questions:
5. What is assessment?
6. Why might we assess?
7. What might we assess?
8. Who might do the assessing?
9. How might we assess?
10. What might we do as a result of assessment?

Assessment is the general term used for measuring students' performance on a course against the aims and objectives of that course. Assessment may be formative or summative.

Formative Assessment is assessment as part of teaching: questions and assignments set to help the student learn effectively, but not used to determine the student's course results.

Summative Assessment is assessment to determine a student's overall level of performance on the course: questions and assignments, the grades or scores of which are used in determining the student's course result.

ITQs are developed for self-assessment. For example, they could include questions which ask the students to review, revise, or summarize what they have learned from the course material. As a guide to self-assessment, the course material could also include suggested solutions and comments.

Example: Write down your own definition of an ITQ.

CMAs utilize computer assessment. They are typically multiple-choice questions, and Thorpe (1987, 15) stated that over 90 percent of the CMA question sets at the Open University have been of the multiple-choice type. CMAs are well suited for CMC since both technologies are based on computers.

TMAs are made for tutor assessment. These could take the form of an essay or a solution to a problem. Thorpe (1987, 16) wrote that the TMAs were the most important elements of the continuous assessment part of all undergraduate courses at the Open University. Obviously, TMAs are a major contribution to the teacher workload, and should therefore be carefully designed with regard to teacher workload.

Example: Write an essay in which you discuss tutor assessment from both the learner's and the tutor's point of view. Post the essay as an e-mail to your tutor.

Peer assessment is included as a fourth category of assessment because CMC provides more opportunities for peer communication than the traditional distance education setting at the Open University as described by Thorpe (1987). Peer assessment could be both informal comments among students collaborating on an assignment and a more formal feedback on individual assignments.

Example: Write an essay in which you discuss peer assessment from both the learners' and the tutor's point of view. Find a peer student who would like to collaborate with you, and exchange essays for mutual peer assessment.

All four assessment categories could be used for both formative and summative assessment. As a teacher, you may benefit from using the matrix presented below to plan your assessment scheme.
 

	Formative assessment	Summative assessment
Self-assessment
Computer assessment
Tutor assessment
Peer assessment

My assignment analyses (Paulsen 1998, 181) of 23 online courses revealed 14 instances of tutor assessment, 11 of self-assessment, 6 of peer assessment, and 5 of computer assessment. This indicates that tutor assessment and self-assessment are more common than peer assessment and computer assessment. Further, no course was found that applied all four assessment functions. In this study, I did not distinguish between formative and summative assessment.

Strategies to Organize and Improve Online Assessment

1. Consider testing the learners' ability to find and apply information, rather than to memorize and reproduce it. One possible approach to online assessment could be to focus more on the students' knowledge management abilities and less on their knowledge of the course content as Mason discussed in her book on global education:

...content-based methods of assessment are still being applied to conditions which demand a skills-based approach. This is undoubtedly because it is easier to design reliable assessment systems which test content rather than process. We have much less experience in assessing students' knowledge management abilities, the ways in which the course has transformed their thinking, and developed their skills in communicating and working with colleagues in the domain of the course content (Mason 1998, 42).

3. Consider including computer assessment. Computer assessment would suit online courses very well since course providers and learners have computers at their disposal. Such assessment could include simple multiple-choice assignments or more complex tutorials that monitor the students' progress. Further, computer assessment could provide immediate feedback and reduce teacher workload.

4. Consider including peer assessment. CMC could be very well suited for peer assessment because students easily can share and comment on contributions. After all, most CMC systems are developed to facilitate such collaboration. Further, by requiring peer students to take part in the process, assessment could become an integral part of their learning experience.

5. Consider using group assignments. Assessment of group assignments is likely to require less teacher workload than assessment of similar assignments prepared by individual students. Further, collaboration among online students could increase learning and result in a product of higher quality.

Activity

1. self-assessment
2. computer assessment
3. tutor assessment
4. peer assessment

Summary

Assignment

References

Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication. Ann Arbor, Mi: UMI Dissertation Services.

Thorpe, M. 1987. Student activities. Epistolodidactica, the European journal of distance education 1987(2).
 
 

Module 7: Teaching Incentives and Barriers

Module Objectives

• discuss incentives and barriers for WWW teaching,
• identify the main elements of the teachers' workload,
• discuss the teachers' perceptions of workload,
• identify alternative strategies that could reduce teacher workload.

Readings

A. J. Weiss, S. J. Agronow, G. J. Kuhns, D. D. Hengstler, 1994. Measuring Faculty Teaching Workload: Beyond Number of Courses Per Year. (http://www.cair.org/conferences/CAIR94/weiss.html)

Faculty Workload: An Integrative Model developed by Arizona State University (http://is.asu.edu/workload/)

Content

Faculty indicate that distance teaching requires a personalized and empathic rapport with students.

Communication skills (voice quality, eye contact, body language, clarity) are critical for distance teachers.

Faculty who teach at a distance are generally positive toward distance education, and their attitudes tend to become more positive with experience.

Faculty motivation for teaching at a distance comes from intrinsic (e.g., challenge) rather than extrinsic (e.g., financial rewards) motivation.

Faculty believe that distance teaching experience improves their traditional teaching as well.


(http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Instruction/tut-01.html)

a lack of awareness on the part of the university community of the general benefits of distance education;

lack of incentives for faculty to be involved in distance education;

the unreasonableness of expecting faculty to commit themselves to a very different teaching approach without any trial period; and

the faculty's sense that distance education was not integrated within the university's programs and plans. This last obstacle emphasizes the importance of an institution-wide policy regarding distance education. (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Instruction/tut-01.html)

Hire support personnel to provide assistance with instructional design and the installation, operation, or maintenance of equipment.

Establish a faculty development laboratory to provide a place to try out and practice with technology.

Provide administrative support for distance education efforts.

Be sensitive to faculty's needs for incentives and recognition for distance teaching efforts.

Provide faculty training, not only in the use of the technology involved but also in presentation and participation skills. (http://wbweb4.worldbank.org/DistEd/Teaching/Instruction/tut-01.html)

Activity

1. Find out how some online teachers are remunerated.
2. In a campus or classroom environment it could be hard to find resources or acceptance for online teaching. Find out how some classroom teachers justify that they spend time on online teaching. Do the administrators encourage online teaching? Do their colleagues accept that online teaching replaces classroom teaching?

Teacher Workload

A list of possible teaching workload measures was compiled by Weiss et al. (further readings). They fell into the following five major areas:

Overall Faculty Teaching Workload


These indicators included broad, general measures of teaching workload such as credit units per faculty FTE [Full-time equivalent], student/faculty FTE ratios, and measures of the number of majors and degrees awarded per faculty FTE.

Individual Faculty Teaching Loads


These indicators included number of courses taught per ladder-rank faculty and were designed to measure students' exposure to ladder faculty as a function of course level.

Number of Courses Offered


These indicators involved looking at the unique course offerings in the curricula of different departments and disciplines and were included in order to assess the diversity, scope, and breadth of course offerings available to students.

Number of Class Sections Offered


These indicators involved looking at the total number of courses offered by level of course: lower division, upper division, graduate; and by type of course: regular primary (lecture, seminar) vs. exceptional instruction (independent study), and provided an assessment of the availability of classes.

Class Size


These indicators included measures of the relative size of courses at different levels and the number of courses offered below minimum policy, providing indicators of instructional quality and utilization of instructional resources. (Further readings)

In traditional education and training the allocation of resources is controlled by the "ringing of the bell"; the bell bounds the dialogue. The curriculum and the bell are useful instruments in the process of estimating the consumption of resources. Even in education or training based on counseling the learner has to make an appointment and estimate the duration and there might be other students at the office waiting for guidance. You can "see and hear" the boundaries of the resources and above all, these boundaries are socially accepted (Jensen 1993, 72).

In 1982, Turoff (1982, 76) wrote: "There is a tremendous investment in teaching a course online." A number of authors have since supported the statement. Experiences from the NKI Electronic College showed that the teacher's main reservation about educational CMC is the heavy teaching workload introduced by the medium (Paulsen 1992a, 14; Paulsen and Rekkedal 1990, 9). In a report on teaching in a virtual classroom, Hiltz concluded:

You are going to work harder in teaching a course online, at least the first time.... Being a "virtual" professor is a little bit like parenthood. You are "on duty" all the time, and there seems to be no end to the demands on your time and energy (Hiltz 1988, 31).

Describing his experiences from teaching three computer programming courses via Bitnet, Johnson (1993) stated that teaching a course for the first time on a network multiplies the amount of time required almost tenfold as compared with on campus teaching. He further contended that subsequent courses require at least double the amount of time needed for on-campus courses. In an international review of CMC, Wells (1992, 12) stated that successive offerings of a course might be less time-consuming and argued that other ways to control instructor workload may be to:

• encourage peer learning as a means to redistribute some instructional responsibilities;
• allow former students to become active alumni by retaining their participation privileges;
• broaden the range of contacts available to students; and
• divide the instructional responsibilities between individuals.

Activity on teacher workload

Preactive and Interactive Workload

While preactive teaching is deliberative, a highly rational process, interactive teaching is more spontaneous and to some extent controlled by the students' questions, requests, and reactions (Moore 1990, 348).

How much work should program planners and teachers invest in each of the two phases depends, among other things, on the number of students that are expected to enroll in the course. In a large-scale correspondence course at the British Open University (BOU), a design team of ten to twenty people could work two years with the preactive phase (Moore 1990, 349). Describing BOU courses that enrolled more than 1,000 online students, Mason (1990, 64) concluded that "conferencing is a viable medium in tutoring large numbers of students at a distance." On the other hand, Bates stated:

Third generation technologies [computer conferencing] are particularly valuable where relatively small numbers of students are concerned, since they avoid the high fixed production costs of the industrial mode, but they do not however bring the economies of scale of the industrial model, unless the opportunities for interaction for an individual student are dramatically curtailed (Bates 1991, 13).

Teaching via conferencing often becomes "labour intensive" on the part of the tutor. Originally we had a hypothesis that the supposed increase in learning quality in the "virtual school" could be compensated by less emphasis on the development of learning material. So far our experiences have not supported this assumption. Thus, it seems that investments in preproduced learning material will be approximately the same as in other large scale systems if the total quality is to be satisfying (Rekkedal 1993, 710).

The general perception found in the questionnaire is that the teacher workload is high. In 18 of the 24 techniques, there were more or as many teachers who perceived the workload to be high than to be low. It varies, however, considerably with technique and context. First, the interviews indicate that one-online techniques have relatively low preactive and interactive workloads. Second, they imply that one-to-one techniques have divergent preactive workloads and high interactive workloads. Third, one-to-many techniques have high preactive workloads and divergent interactive workloads. Fourth, for many-to-many techniques, the preactive workloads vary considerably with technique, and the interactive workloads seem to be high when teachers are highly involved in the interaction with students.

Discussion and implications: These findings support that CMC teaching is perceived to have high workload and that it is important to identify and refine efficient strategies to decrease the workload as was discussed in the literature review. However, the survey also shows that most of the teachers teach courses with small-scale enrollment. So, one may expect that teacher workload could become a major challenge for large-scale enrollment.

Table 3. Perceptions of preactive and interactive workload

Strategies to Reduce Teacher Workload

1. Form a group of experienced and well-trained teachers. The survey shows that the teachers have relatively little experience in CMC teaching, and one may assume that the workload may be reduced as teachers are trained and gain more experience. Courses about CMC teaching and teacher training programs should be developed and made available for the teachers. The survey revealed that a number of such courses exist, but as additional research and experience on CMC teaching become available, more and better courses should be developed. Further, the literature review and the interviews indicate that the workload is especially high the first time one teaches a CMC course, and that material developed for one course could be used again in other courses. A group of teachers could possibly also benefit from collaboration and exchange of experience and course material. To facilitate teacher collaboration, the organization could organize face-to-face seminars and online faculty lounges for their teachers.

2. Establish a system for technical and administrative support. Some of the teachers suggested that support staff or the supporting organization should handle some functions for the teachers. For example, technical questions could probably be handled better by the technical support staff, and administrative requests could probably be answered better and more efficiently by the administrative staff. Even senior students could be engaged to support new students in order to relieve teachers from trivial support work.

3. Shift attention from spontaneous interactive teaching to deliberate course design. Moore (1990, 348) argued that "...preactive teaching is deliberative, a highly rationale process, interactive teaching is more spontaneous and to some extent controlled by students' questions, requests, and reactions." Moore's argument entails that the interactive workload depends more on the number of enrolled students than the preactive workload does. Similarly, the interviewees' advice on how teachers could handle more than 100 students indicates that the interactive workload could be decreased through careful preactive design and preparation. The course designers should also carefully consider which teaching techniques are suitable for the course. So, one possible way to handle high enrollment is to adapt the large-scale model with more emphasis on course design.

4. Pay special attention to the assessment workload per student when you design course assignments. The number and form of course assignments are especially important for the teacher workload. So, the course designers should pay especial attention to the teacher workload generated by the assignments. The teachers' assessment workload could be reduced considerably by substituting teacher assessment with peer-, computer-, or self-assessment. Further, group assignments could entail less teacher assessment than individual assignments do.

5. Restrict teacher interaction with individual students and small groups of students. Since the interactive workloads seem to be high in one-to-one techniques and in many-to-many techniques with high teacher involvement, high enrollment courses may have to use less of these interactive techniques even though they are perceived to have high learner outcome. These results support Bates (1991, 13) when he stated that the technology does not bring economies of scale unless the opportunities for interaction for individual students are dramatically curtailed.

6. Encourage and facilitate interaction among students. Students should be regarded as a resource for mutual learning. Services, teaching techniques, and assignments could be designed to encourage and facilitate interaction among students. Former students could become active alumni and be encouraged to participate in some interaction.

7. Automate responses. The teacher could develop a response library of often used comments and even present this on a bulletin board for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Further, automatic responses could be designed into a course, for example as automatic e-mail responses or self-correcting quizzes.

8. Develop a scheme to handle the demand for expedient responses. Several teachers comment that the time flexibility and the expected response time influence the nature of their workload. Therefore, one may argue that relaxing the requirements for expedient responses and allowing more flexible working hours could ease some teachers' perception of workload. However, students want expedient feedback, so co-teaching, shift work, and the use of teaching assistants may be considered as schemes to share a continuous and increasing workload among several individual teachers. All teachers should also inform the students about their online work schedule, so that the students know which days of the week and what time of the day responses from the teachers could be expected.

Activity

Summary

Assignment

References

Baker, B.O. and Dickson, M. W. 1993. Aspects of successful practice for working with college faculty in distance learning programs. Ed Journal, 8(2), J-6.

Blanch, G. 1994. Don't all faculty want their own TV show? Barriers to faculty participation in distance education. DEOS, 4.(1).

Christensen, B. B. 1990. Teachers and CMC at Jutland Open University: A case study. In Media and Technology in European Distance Education, ed. A. W. Bates, 253-58. Milton Keynes: Open University for the EADTU.

Dillon, C. L. And Walsh, S. J. 1992. Faculty: The neglected resource in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education 6(2), 64-69.

Hardy, V. 1993. Face to face and online tutoring: A different experience? In Teleteaching, eds. G. Davies and B. Samways, 339-344. Proceedings of the IFIP TC3 Third Teleteaching Conference, TeleTeaching 93, Trondheim, Norway, 20-25 August, 1993.

Hiltz, S. R. 1988. Teaching in a Virtual Classroom. Volume 2 of A Virtual Classroom on EIES: Final Evaluation Report. Newark, NJ: New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Jensen, S. S. 1993. Organizational priority and prestige, differentiation and automation – factors of importance. In Proceedings of the Costel Workshop: Organization, Technology and Economics of Education, 68-75. Copenhagen: Costel.

Johnson, E. 1993. Teaching on international computer networks. TEXT Technology 3(2):3-5.

Kaye, A. 1989. Computer-mediated communication and distance education. In Mindweave: Communications, Computers, and Distance Education, eds. R. Mason and A. Kaye, 3-21. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Mason, R. 1990. Conferencing for mass distance education. 56-64. Proceedings from the Third Symposium on Computer Mediated Communication at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, May 15-17.

Moore, M. G. 1990. Correspondence study. In Adult Learning Methods, ed. M. W. Galbraith, 345-365. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Paulsen, M. F. 1992a. The NKI Electronic College: Five years of computer conferencing in distance education. In From Bulletin Boards to Electronic Universities: Distance Education, Computer-Mediated Communication, and Online Education, M. F. Paulsen, 2-17. University Park, Pennsylvania: The American Center for the Study of Distance Education.

Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for Computer-mediated Communication. Ann Arbor, Mi: UMI Dissertation Services.

Paulsen, M. F. and T. Rekkedal. 1990. The Electronic College: Selected Articles from the EKKO Project. Oslo: NKI Forlaget.

Rekkedal, T. 1993. Experiences with computer conferencing and teleteaching at NKI, Norway. In Teleteaching, eds. G. Davies and B. Samways, 705-714. Proceedings of the IFIP TC3 Third Teleteaching Conference, TeleTeaching 93, Trondheim, Norway, 20-25 August, 1993.

Søby, M. 1992. Creating collaborative environments in education and training –Waiting for Electropolis. A paper presented at the Nordic conference: The Third Generation Distance Education at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, January 24.

Turoff, M. 1982. The EIES educational experience. A paper presented in the Conference Briefs for the conference Telecommunications and Higher Education. New Jersey Institute of Technology, April 29, 1982.

Wells, R. 1992. Computer-Mediated Communication for Distance Education: An International Review of Design, Teaching, and Institutional Issues. University Park, Pennsylvania: The American Center for the Study of Distance Education.
 
 

Module 8: Administration of WWW Education

Module Objectives

• show awareness of and discuss important issues regarding the administration of students, teachers, courses, and course material,
• describe and assess some of the standard systems that are available for the administration of online education,
• discuss and compare outsourcing, in-house development, and standard systems for the administration of online education.

Readings

• Aoki, K. and D. Pogroszewski. 1998. Virtual University Reference Model: A Guide to Delivering Education and Support Services to the Distance Learner. (http://www.westga.edu/~distance/aoki13.html)
• Porter. J. H., T. Hedegaard, and T. T. Straut. 1997. Administrative Systems in the Virtual University: Best Practices. (http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cnc9738/cnc9738.html)
• Web-based Authoring Tools Comparison Report: (http://www1.umn.edu/dmc/portfolio/comparison/index.shtml)

Content

In the article, Virtual University Reference Model (required unit readings), Aoki and Pogroszewski present a virtual university reference model which provides administrative services, student services, resource services, and faculty services. These four components are discussed in two case studies: The Western Governors University and The University of Phoenix.

In another article, Administrative Systems in the Virtual University (required unit readings), Porter et al. focus on student and faculty support. The article also discusses how this is handled at the virtual campuses of the University of Colorado and the University of Phoenix.

It is easy to provide course material on the web and claim that it is online education. However, it is a far more demanding challenge to develop and administrate online colleges. When developing an administrative system that can handle students, teachers, courses, and course material, the online education institutions have three choices: outsourcing, purchasing standard systems, or developing in-house systems.

An online college may have to handle thousands of students, hundreds of teachers, and a large number of courses with password restricted web pages, discussion forums, distribution lists, class rosters, and student presentations. It may also have to provide administrative systems for the dispatch of textbooks, handling of tuition and examination fees, and organization of local examinations. These services constitute a major challenge for many traditional institutions. They might therefore consider the possible advantage of collaborating with institutions that offer these services.

Administration of Students

Ideally, online students should be able to enroll online, and this should automatically result in access to course material and textbooks. Registration fees and course fees can also be handled online.

Students need counseling services and technical support. These services could be available as online manuals, e-mail support, and telephone services. Ideally, the services should be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But this is both expensive and difficult to organize.

Most students prefer to sit exams at local examination sites. The traditional written form of examination requires a system for distribution and invigilation of exam assignments.

Administration of Teachers

Online teachers have to be engaged, trained, assessed, and paid. Online teaching is often a sideline activity and it is seldom the teachers' primary engagement. Therefore, their loyalty will primarily be towards their main employer. In addition, it can be hard to implement a rational payment scheme for online teaching. A scheme based on remuneration per student is perhaps easy to implement, but it does not necessarily reflect the actual workload or stimulate collaborative activities. A scheme based on payment by the hour could also be hard to document and control because online teachers often teach in many short intervals in between other activities.

Online teachers have to report student progress to the course provider. Compulsory assignments have to be registered and passive students have to be monitored so that course providers can initiate procedures to help students who fall behind. This is especially important for course providers that allow individual progress plans.

A number of surveys confirm that students emphasize the teacher's role when they assess the quality of online education. It is therefore important that course providers consider establishing an assessment and pay system that stimulates quality teaching.

Administration of Courses

An online course requires a number of online services. Examples are web-based study guides, conference areas, and class rosters. These services are often only available to the teacher and the students who have enrolled in the course and have received personal passwords. Access control could be used for example to exclude people who do not pay tuition fees and to establish a learning environment where students feel more comfortable to contribute online.

If many students register for a course, it may be necessary to establish several classes with one teacher for each class. An additional challenge occurs when a course needs to be revised. Then it would be necessary to maintain two versions of the same course until all students who enrolled in the old course have completed the course.

Administration of Course Material

Many courses include course material that is not online, for example textbooks, CD-ROMs, and videocassettes. To handle this, the institution could establish an in-house logistics system for the dispatch of course material, it could outsource the service to an online bookstore, or it could require the students to obtain the material themselves.

Institutions might consider establishing standards and templates for design of online courses. These could include a standard for online services, a standard format and file structure for the various course elements, and templates for the presentation formats. Such standards may increase efficiency in course design and facilitate learning, as students become familiar with the standard course features.

A recurring problem is the need for maintaining and revising online material. Hyperlinks to external resources are often not reliable, and the resources they point to could be discontinued or moved. This can be detected by software that periodically checks all external links. In addition, online students have a wonderful ability to suggest improvements in the course material. It is possible to follow up on these suggestions and to continuously update and improve the online material. However, students may complain if there are so many changes during a semester that one may ask which version of the course that is valid for the final exam.

Outsourcing, In-house Development, or Standard Systems?

Institutions that plan to offer online education may follow several strategies. The simplest strategy is probably to collaborate with an institution that already has a functional administrative system. One example is shown in Figure 9. Another solution, which requires more technical competence, is to develop an in-house system based on common Internet services. The third option is to purchase a standard system for online education. These standard systems are continuously being improved, but they may still need much local adaptation. They may only meet some of the administrative needs, and they could place some pedagogical limitations on the courses.

Figure 9. One example of a provider of administrative systems

Some standard systems are FirstClass, TopClass, Lotus Learning Space, Web Ware, Next Generation Learning, Virtual U, and WebCT. Further information on these and other systems is available online. It is not the role of this course to recommend any standard system. There are many analyses of them on the Internet. For instance, University of Minnesota Digital Media Center provides a 40-page analysis of four systems in the Web-based Authoring Tools Comparison Report (further unit reading). The analysis compares the systems with regard to:

• information publishing,
• interaction tools,
• assessment tools,
• access to centralized resources for teaching and learning,
• ease of use,
• technical features.

Summary

Assignment

References

Course Glossary

The key terms are computer-mediated communication and teaching techniques. In the following, these terms are defined in logical sequence with related pivotal terms:

Computer-mediated communication (CMC): Transmission and reception of messages using computers as input, storage, output, and routing devices. CMC includes information retrieval, electronic mail, bulletin boards, and computer conferencing. CMC also comprises synchronous and asynchronous communication.

Information retrieval systems: CMC systems that facilitate searching and retrieval of information.

Electronic mail systems (E-mail systems): CMC systems that facilitate exchange of messages between individual users.

Bulletin board systems: CMC systems that facilitate archiving and retrieval of messages posted by originators with write access and retrieved by users with read access.

Computer conferencing systems: Computer-mediated group communication systems that archive messages so that they can be read and commented on by all members of a conference.

Synchronous communication: Real-time communication.

Asynchronous communication: Communication where the message is stored until the receivers find it convenient to retrieve it.

CMC based teaching system: A CMC system for teaching comprising learners, one or more teachers, course content, learning resources, teaching methods, teaching techniques, and teaching devices.

Teaching method: A way of organizing people for learning. The teaching methods included here are one-online, one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.

Teaching technique: A way of accomplishing teaching objectives. According to how the techniques prescribe student interaction with learning resources, the techniques are classified as one-online techniques, one-to-one techniques, one-to-many techniques, and many-to-many techniques.

Teaching device: Tool that can assist the teaching process. This definition distinguishes between these four categories of CMC-based teaching devices: information retrieval systems, electronic mail, bulletin boards, and computer conferencing.

Teaching workload: The amount of time spent on teaching functions. The teaching workload consists of the preactive and the interactive teaching workload.

Preactive teaching workload: Workload associated with program design and teacher preparation, in other words, the teaching workload before the course or program starts.

Interactive teaching workload: Workload associated with instruction, in other words, the teaching workload after the course or program starts.

Teaching functions: The duties teachers have with regard to the teaching process. This definition distinguishes between organizational functions, social functions, intellectual functions, and assessment functions.

Facilitation technique: A manner of helping others learn. Facilitation techniques are used to carry out teaching functions.

One-online techniques: The techniques classified as one-online are characterized by retrieval of information from online resources and the fact that a learner can perform the learning task with little or no communication with the teacher or other students. One-online techniques include:

• Online databases are organized, searchable collections of information that can be utilized in the learning process.
• Online publications are periodicals, journals, reports, articles, etc., that are available to learners online or distributed to them online.
• Online software applications are software programs that learners either can execute via the network or download from the network.
• Online interest groups are people who convene via CMC to discuss and share experiences on a topic of common interest. Learners can join the online interest group to enhance their knowledge and comprehension of the topic.
• Online interviews are online interactions between learners who ask focused questions and resource people who answer them.

• Online learning contracts are formal agreements which detail what the learners should learn, how they should accomplish it, and the specific evaluation criteria that should be used in judging the completion of the learning.
• Online apprenticeships facilitate online access to dedicated masters and peers who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with learners through goal-oriented learning interactions over a period of time.
• Online internships allow learners to practice online skills under the guidance and supervision of qualified professionals.
• Online correspondence is a form of online education in which the learning is directed or facilitated through personal, written communication between a tutor and individual students.

• Online lectures are organized, in-depth, online presentations that are designed for learning and facilitate online questions from learners and answers from the lecturer.
• Online symposiums are series of presentations given by a number of experts followed by questions from the learners and answers from the experts. The teacher can function as a moderator of the symposium.
• Online skits are prepared enactments in which real or imaginary online people, such as teachers and their alter egos, demonstrate or discuss certain issues or concepts.

• Online debates are structured discussions in which the learners argue two or more sides of an important issue to clarify differences and related reasoning within a given set of rules and time schedule.
• Online simulations are online imitations of real processes that are designed to help experience and understand the dynamics of a complex process.
• Online role plays are enactments of situations in which learners act out scenes like actors in a play. A teacher can use structured role plays that are based on case studies or spontaneous role plays that are based on momentary experiences.
• Online case studies are descriptions of real situations that are designed to help the learners understand and practice problem-solving and decision-making procedures in situations that are complex enough to warrant analysis and online discussion.
• Online discussion groups are places where a group of learners exchange ideas on a given topic.
• Transcript-based assignments utilize the ability to provide transcripts of online interaction that could be used to promote learner reflection. This could be done by asking the learners to reflect on their overall personal contributions during the course, or to summarize all previous contributions on a specific topic, or to rewrite an early statement to demonstrate that additional learning has taken place during the course.
• Online brainstormings are used primarily to generate a pool of ideas on a given topic or to help determine the exact nature of content to be studied. The approach encourages learners to think creatively and to expand upon ideas of other learners.
• Online delphi is a technique to obtain the most reliable consensus of opinion of a group of experts using a series of intensive questionnaires interspersed with controlled opinion feedback.
• Nominal group technique is based on individual generation and ranking of ideas, followed by a public presentation of the priority ranked list of ideas, a discussion of the presented ideas, and vote for the final ranking.
• Online forums provide teachers and learners with a space were they can convene to raise and discuss issues from the course, make comments, offer information, or ask questions. The teacher usually functions as a moderator.
• Online projects are major tasks, initially loosely defined, which have composite objectives and are limited in time and scope. Online projects require online communication between the learners in the project groups and access to a variety of online resources.
• Student presentations is a technique in which learners are asked to present their work to other learners via e-mail, computer conferences, web-pages, etc. Feedback from other students is not necessarily required.