"Is There A Class With This Content?" Web CT and the Limits of Individualization

First, to acknowledge, we had two readings this week in Policy and Planning. The second reading was "Suggestions for Bottom-Up Design of Online Programs." The second reading was informative, detailing how the University of Florida began implementation of a completely on line degree program. There was much trial and error before hitting on a completely successful on line Masters program. While the article provided insights into the decision making process of selecting an LMS, whether or not to use a third party vendor and how to administer a non-traditional program within a traditional education structure, I found the article "Is There A Class With This Content?" to be more engaging.

In the article "Is There A Class With This Content?" a couple of strands of thought came together for me.

Interactivity and Social Presence in eLearning
The author traces the origin of Computer Based Learning in the article. She does a great job of linking the beginnings of computer based training to Behaviorism. The idea that teaching happens in controlled environments where information is presented and a learner absorbs the presented information. Testing is feedback. Learning and related testing leads to a demonstrable competency on the part of the learner. This to me is fascinating. In part because I have been exposed to more social constructivist philosophies for most of my adult learning. The article puts the early beginnings of computer based instruction into a context wherein computer based training models were extolled as superior to models of learning where "live" teachers create "mass produced learning" designed for the median, not the individual. It was fascinating to reflect on how things have changed. Currently, best practices in computer based medium advocate creating a social presence, building learning communities in a new computer mediated environment. It was amazing for me to see how the perspectives have changed.

Tie in to Personal Learning Environments
As I've thought about our group's presentation topic Personal Learning Environments. I saw a continuum in my mind, on the one side of the continuum were Computer Based Training Models with control in the hands of the instructors/designers. In the middle of the continuum were LMS / CMS /LCMS systems offering instructor control over content and set up but student participation and discussion (social presence). With Personal Learning Environments control is outside of institutional / instructor control and in the hands of each individual learner. The learner has become self-directed. It is interesting to think about where this might go in the future....and an idea for a graphical illustration!

Interactivity from Distance Education to eLearning

"Interactivity is the process that will help you become actively engaged with other learners, with the instructor, and with the material being learned. It is the key to effective e-learning because it will lead you to act on and reflect on the information and to transform it into a new personal meaning: What does this mean to me?"

- from “What is Interactivity in E-Learning”


The term "interactivity" in its original context refers to computer mediated instruction. Use of the term interactivity would not be heard in the 1800's to describe Correspondence Courses as they grew in popularity. However, in applying a broad definition of interactivity I will attempt to point out how interactivity / interaction has evolved from Distance Education to eLearning. Driscoll and Carliner categorize the reciprocal learning exchanges of interactivity/ interaction as falling into one of three categories; learner-content, learner-instructor and learner-learner.(p337) As I trace the history of eLearning I will identify what types of interactivity / interaction were given primacy at various points in Distance Education and eLearning. I believe that by doing so one will see how eLearning has emerged and distinguished itself from its roots in Distance Learning.

Beginnings of Distance Education:

Most sources date the start of Distance Education as the early 1800's. At this time large scale reliable mail systems allowed correspondence education to grow into a phenomenon. Correspondence courses exhibited two types of interactivity, learner-instructor and learner-content. After study of a given unit of curriculum, a student would submit their work for review by the instructor. Unlike the prevailing philosophy of our day, Constructivism, the instructor's role was not that of guide on the side. Rather, the instructor was the expert. The learner was expected to absorb the transmitted knowledge through the study (and often times rote memorization) of materials presented. There was no learner-learner interaction planned in the correspondence study and limited learner-instructor interactions.

Early 1900's - the rise of Radio and Film:

Radio and Film were two new mediums emerging in the 1900's. Each gave great hope for new ways of presenting engaging educational opportunities. There was rapid growth of educational radio programs during this time. Many felt this new medium held the capacity to transform education as it was known. Unfortunately, interest in these radio programs dropped off quickly. By 1847 few were left broadcasting. Film maintained a larger, long standing presence in the realm of education. While never supplanting traditional classroom education it became a standard supplement to classroom teaching. Both film and radio are forms of transmission. Unless the instruction was delivered in a classroom setting the interaction was limited to learner-content. Given a classroom setting these two new mediums could be used to initiate learner-learner, or learner-instructor interaction. However, on their own these new mediums did not break from an educational philosophy of knowledge transmission.

Early 1980's Computer Based Training (CBT) and Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI):

There are probably a few other terms used to describe the type of early learning with computers phase of distance learning. These early ventures into computer mediated learning environments focused on using the computer as a delivery mechanism. Initially, instruction was designed to interact with the learner without the need of a human presence on the other end. While the computer programs mimicked instructor response, the interactivity was essentially learner - content. CBT and CAI were costly to develop. The need for more effective means of eLearning that combined missing elements of learner-learner and learner-instructor interactivity was desired.

Late 1990's Learner Management Systems (LMS), Blended Learning Solutions and Instructor Led Training (ILT):

Learner Management Systems such as Blackboard, eCollege and Moodle stepped in to fill the gap in interactivity and provide for tracking of eEducation. These systems provided ways for learner-learner interactions to occur in forums mediated by instructors. Such systems provided a format for interactivity that encompassed all three levels of interactivity; learner-learner, learner-content and learner-instructor. This is not to say that use of the tools meant all classes on these platforms contained high degrees of interactivity. Rather, these platforms were developed to contain and track these interactions. Blended learning was another form of learning that hoped to fill in the missing learner-learner and learner-instructor interactions of prior CBT and CAI instruction. Blended learning uses technologies in the traditional face to face classroom, or provides eLearning content in conjunction with face to face class time. Typically, the face to face class time supplements the missing learner-learner interactions and learner-instructor interaction of the accompanying eLearning content. Finally, Instructor Led Training (ILT), environments were developed that sought to replicate the traditional classroom using various forms of technology as the medium. "Live" instruction takes place via conferencing tools. An instructor leads the class. Various levels of interaction between learners-learner, learner-content and learner-instructor can be planned within ILT.

2000 eLearning of today:

There is a consensus today that there should be methodologies and strategies developed specifically for eLearning. Interactivity as a defined topic of study has come into its own. As eLearning environments are designed, consideration for addressing the complete need for interactivity on all three fronts; learner-learner, learner-instructor and learner-content is encouraged as a means to make the learning environment effective. Web 2.0 tools that encourage collaboration and active creation support the Constructivist philosophy of education prevalent today. They also enhance the interactivity desired in eLearning today. By looking back at the history of eLearning as it emerged from Distance learning much of the interest in social media in education can be seen as a desire to address the missing interactivity level of earlier forms of distance education.


Resources:

Driscoll, M. & Carliner, S. (2005) Advanced Web-Based Training Strategies. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer

Kyllis,J.P.. (2005) The Future of eLearning: a Short History of eLearning and a Look into the Future of Computer Mediated Learning.

An Ideal World: The E-Learning P3 Model

The People-Process-Product Continuum in E-Learning: The E-Learning P3Model -Badrul H. Khan

People, process and the product are the foundations of this eLearning model. The article breaks down the process into planning, design, development, evaluation and delivery. At each stage in the process the people involved and their responsibilities are detailed. This is where the article starts to feel a little bit like the ideal world. There is a job for each responsibility in the process; a designer, a copyright coordinator, an evaluation specialist, a course integrator, multimedia developer, graphic artist.... I have my doubts that there are many organizations that have people for each of these roles. But, it is a model so I let me put these doubts aside. At each stage in the process a product is produced. In the above illustration I replicated the figure 1. that illustrates which product is produced at which state in the process by the appropriate group.

The value of the article is in the detailed description of the process of creating eLearning products. As one plans it is good to have an idea of what the planning process looks like. This article provides such a reference.

It's a Brave New World

"As of mid-2007, (IBM) was running over 20,000 internal wiki sites, 26,000 blogs, and over 400,000 of its full and part time employees were participating in "Blue Pages," IBM's own MySpace-type social networking system." (p. 4)

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms - by Will Richardson

It's a great example from the business context. How can my company use this new technology? What business problems will it help solve? How can it foster a learning culture? Affect performance?

The Practice and Art of Blogging

Assigned reading: Reflections from the Introduction of Blogs and RSS Feeds into a Preservice Instructional Technology Course by Ricard E. West, etc....

As we begin commenting on each others blogs this week, the article was timely. The premise of the article is that teachers learn just like their students learn (they are not an entirely different species teachers and students!) - through doing, reading, reflecting and collaborating. There is a brief introduction to what is a blog and the advantages of a blog (cheap, easy way to publish, accessible, way to contribute and learn from community of people with a similar interest).

From here the authors go on to reflect on two groups of teachers that they introduced to blogging. The first group had a generally favorable response to blogging and found the blogs to be a helpful way to stimulate dialogs and reflection. However the group's instructors felt that the students neglected posting to their blogs regularly and responding to their peers.

I found the gap between the student's perceived satisfaction with the tools and the instructor's dissatisfaction with the way the tools were used to be interesting. The instructors decided to add more structure to the blogging of the second group. The second time around the instructors taught the "conceptual basis of the tools - how they differed from other online tools." p. 56 The instructors also added RSS feeds as a way to keep up with student postings in the second group.

Guidelines implemented by the instructors for the second class included:

• developing a well defined purpose for the new technology
• the purpose of the blog - private, or for discussion
• teaching how to use track backs and comments, blog rolls and perma links for discussion blogs
• addressing technical issues of establishing a blog
• modeling good blogging practice, reflective, links, writing for an audience, etc...
• need to review strategies after implementing (ie: a few weeks in re-evaluate what is working what is not working).

It seemed the larger take away (or, one of them) is that instruction needs to be clear and expectations defined before launching into blogging with a class. Also, be prepared to be supportive on technical issues as you introduce blogs to your class.

I found myself wondering what makes for the art of blogging? Links, etc...? Thoughts?

Policy and Planning for eLearning Programs

By starting my readings with the article, How does distance education compare with classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature, I stunted my enthusiasm! This research article is long on the description of how the meta-analysis was performed and why a meta-analysis methodology was used. I skipped to the results shortly after starting the article; no significant difference between on line learning outcomes and traditional classroom outcomes - more specific data variables need to be considered in the measurement of traditional classroom instruction and on line instruction. After reading this, it increasingly difficult to make myself go back to reading more about the methodology of the research. I wish the article had been presented to me at the time I took my statistics course. I would have appreciated the methodology discussions more.



Teaching and learning online: a beginner's guide to eLearning and eTeaching in higher education was a more accessible reading. It provided a starting place for inquiry. This article provides a (relatively) quick overview of online learning; online learning, learning tasks, learning resources, supports, designs, design and development strategies. As the title implies, the article would be an appropriate resource for those beginning to teach or design in eLearning environments. Overall clear, succinct definitions and descriptions of various eLearning strategies as were given as related to best practices and educational theory.


Parts that I appreciated:

Description of Vygotsky's theory as it relates to Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This was as clear a description as I had heard of the ZPD (never having studied Vygotsky's theories directly myself). The part that helped me was, "The ZPD is regarded as the point on (a) continuum where learning supports provided by teachers peers or the resources themselves, help move learners from the zone of actual development to the ZPD....(including) any teaching or learning strategies which help the learner master the requirements of the learning situation." (p.67) An emphasis throughout the article was making sure that instructors and designers are providing supports in developing eLearning, by setting learning expectations, planning appropriate learning tasks and providing all important learning resources.

Another helpful place in this resource (scaffolding moment!) was the authors presentation of "learning designs and objects" up through their presentation of "metadata" usage. "Contemporary online learning development is moving away from ...pages of electronic text, to more deliberately planned learning designs, learning tasks and processes...."(p.99) It was interesting to read that the development of reusable learning objects was one goal in the development of learning objects. I wondered, how does this fit with the idea that the most effective learning takes place in contextual (therefore specific) evironments? It would seem there is some tension there.

Finally, the "metadata" section clarified for me what SCORM is. I had not realized SCORM was part of a larger movement with various organizations working to define metadata standards. Likening this drive towards developing metadata standards to the indexing that occurs in libraries helped clarify for me the objective of the movement. It was also enlightening to see examples of the metadata in headers. A light went on for me as I have seen some of these. Not so elaborate as the examples shown in the reading, but it made more sense. I appreciated the examples on pages 108-109.