Uys, P.M. (1997,
October). Towards the virtual class:
trends in cyberspace education. “Virtual Technologies in Tertiary Education: A
Vision for
Towards the Virtual Class:
Trends in Cyberspace Education
Senior Lecturer and Project Director: Educational New
Media
E-mail: philip.uys@globe-online.com
Personal
homepage: http://www.globe-online.com/philip.uys
This paper, presented at the "Virtual Technologies
in Tertiary Education: A Vision for
Invitation
If you need assistance in the strategic
implementation of e-Learning (networked education/distributed learning) in your
institute, you are welcome to contact philip.uys@globe-online.com to discuss your needs.
|
Table of Contents |
I would like to acknowledge the positive
support of Nick Zepke, Head of the Education Development Department, Bruce Phillipps, Vice-President and Bob Bubendorfer,
President of Massey University at
The strategic directives of research and
development of distributed on-line education (a term we coined and use at the hydi Educational New Media Centre to describe on-line
education - which include teaching, learning and research - be it intranet or
Internet based) in tertiary education institutes as a way of utilising modern computer technology in education and as a
means to educate more students more effectively while increasing the quality of
education, are validated and strengthened by the points presented here. While
some of the developments and trends discussed confirm the
About 50% of the people who attended the ICDE
conference in June 1997 have been using on-line real-time communications over
the Internet regularly.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and head of the
Media Lab at MIT and author of "Being Digital" who was the keynote
speaker at the ICDE conference, mentioned that 60% of a phone call cost is
billing, which is the part not occurring with VOTN
(voice over the Net). He also stated that with the increase in low orbit
satellites, the phone companies will be bypassed, implying that drastic changes
are on its way in this commercial area.
"Distance" is no longer defined in
terms of physical proximity but in response time!
It will become an essential and normal part in
on-line courses to provide this extremely cost-effective way of communication
between students and between students and lecturers ("Cyber
guides"!). The educational value of it include
Referring again to Nicholas Negroponte who says
that the Net’s decentralised and distributed
nature is its robustness! - it won’t fall over.
(Its weakest point however currently is inter-country links.)
Looking back at its history it started out as
ARPANET, a
Internet 2 also seems to be in the pipeline : 100 US Universities involved are involved to make
it a faster and bigger network for educational purposes only (remember that up
to a few years ago, that was the sole purpose of the Net!). The US Government
also is supporting and pursuing this next generation Internet.
The size of the Internet has been doubling each
year since 1974, and at the same time each year every person is using 10 times
more bandwidth - this pattern will continue for the foreseeable future - yet,
the Net has been robust enough to survive.
(see http://www.mids.org/mapsale/world/matrworld.gif
for a map of how Internet servers truly covers the globe).
At the same time access is becoming easier and
cheaper eg the "Internet computer" has
recently been launched internationally and in New Zealand, while other devices
are also now becoming available which uses the TV as the graphical user
interface (although issues on standards are not yet fully finalised).
Prof Barry Munitz,
Vice Chancellor:
Dr Graham Spanier,
Vice Chancellor of PennState, indicated that some say
one full time year of study needs to be completed every 7 years in the
A new term that some tertiary educational
institutes use for this type of education is "incremental
development", which in essence is ongoing professional development in a
very specific area. Dale Spender in a talk at our campus two weeks ago used the
term "portfolio education" to emphasise
this aspect and stated that in this type of society, the whole population
becomes "the student body"!
Because life long learning has been
strongly emphasised in New Zealand, increased
government funding for less formal courses might encourage local tertiary
institutes to modularise their courses for
incremental development.
In
Maris O’Rourke, Director of Education at the World Bank,
said in her session that educational technologies, if used
wisely, enhances the quality of learning.
Dr Barry Munitz
stressed that distributed on-line education is a "
Why would they say this?
Quality distributed on-line education can:
With the advent of intranets, the ease and
feasibility of offering the same facilities to local students that are being
offered to distance students have increased extensively. With the same
interface (ie a Web browser), on-line education and
teaching materials are available to both local and distance students.
Traditionally, centres
for distance education were often the minority who understood and used
information technology in education out of necessity because of its ease of distribution, ease of maintenance and later because of its
potential to increase the quality of learning and teaching. At the same time
their colleagues carried on with face-to-face education with workload formulas
based on contact hours and lecturing in bigger and bigger lecture halls (on a
visit to an institution in the US in June 1997, they were building a 900 seat
lecture hall! - which is in any case just another form of distance education!)
On the other hand, some educational institutes
have the majority of their on-line materials solely for the use of local
students. That was the case for instance when I visited MIT in 1996 and which,
I am told, is also currently the case at
Scenarios like these indicate that the
possibility and reality of convergence of both local and distance education
modes is a paradigm shift which is currently being made by only a minority of
tertiary educational institutes.
How can this convergence look in operation?: teaching and learning materials are available and used by
academic staff as well as local and distance students in a creative way. Local
students may have all their lecture notes on-line as well-designed hypermedia courseware which include on-line communication facilities,
different navigation paths, catering for different learning styles, access and
pointers to other Web resources and exercises. The local students may also have
face-to-face tutorials to work through exercises and sit tests and exams in a
physical building. Distance students may also have all their lecture notes
on-line as well-designed hypermedia courseware, have on-line real-time
tutorials, attend workshops on the physical campus, but do their assignments
on-line. However the synergy of this convergence is that local and distance
students can meet on-line as well as physically, evaluate each other’s
on-line published materials, do group assignments together, form informal study
groups etc!
Instead of trying to meet traditional workload
formulas and extend often ineffective class room and distance education
techniques, this convergence rather look at creating the best possible learning
scenarios for both local and distance students in a more flexible way.
Hence the term: "distributed on-line education" coined by the hydi Educational New Media Centre to indicate this
convergence.
Managing this convergence will be a key aspect
in the transition to more modern approaches to teaching and learning.
In the keynote message at ICDE 1997, the
President of ICDE, Armando Rocha Trinidade (Vice
Chancellor, Open University of Portugal), emphasised
that one of the global trends in his view is that strategic alliances between
business and education are increasingly occurring and should be encouraged.
Dr Barry Munitz,
Chancellor:
Education and entertainment is getting closer
too! Hollywood Studios are also getting involved in partnerships (currently
project with Warner Bros to identify how each student learn and what they need
to learn, and then match up with specific computer mediated learning systems).
Currently in the
Will we soon see "The Ultimate Consortium"
delivering the same quality of education, at the same cost or less, but more
entertaining and taken shorter for degreeing
students? A consortium consisting of a huge financial
sponsor, computer giant (eg MS), prominent company in
the film industry drawing on the "best professors" available for the
content and educational process? Will free academic discourse, critique
and research be valued, encouraged and supported when the bottom-line is moving
to achieve a target profit margin?
At the same time "collaboration",
"Strategic Alliance", "partnerships" among educational
institutes is also occurring eg in the US "The
West Governors University" is being developed (some eastern states also
wants to join). At the same time it is being argued that the smaller
niche market focused educational institutes are institutes at the future?
Maybe we’ll soon see the emergence of the
"distributed educational institute" (as has occurred in the IT
industry in database and network deployment and in modern management systems -
moving from centralised to decentralised
to distributed systems) which has its focus, control, power and resources
distributed throughout the organisation?
Tertiary educational institutes will need to
rethink mission, objectives and strategies to turn threats into opportunities
in this volatile and dynamic environment!
The fact that the delivery language of courses
in
Nicholas Negroponte believes that English will
not become an international language for culture, but like airport control, it
is through the Net, becoming even more of a common denominator. By the way:
Although much more is required for a true
translation of a course into another culture, one step towards this is to amend
courses for delivery in English speaking nations by having case studies,
exercises, examples and graphics in separate folders (directories) from the
text in an object-oriented fashion, so that different sets of these
instructional elements can be templated out for
different countries or even states within countries.
At the same time, sensitivity for the
differences among cultures is essential.
Modern educational new media enables more
tertiary institutes than ever before to participate in the global education
market - the big and the small players alike find that they can participate, as
illustrated by the story of the two dogs that were surfing the Web; one dog
said to the other: "You know, what I like about the Web is that nobody
knows you’re a dog!" The modern educational new media with it brings
both the opportunity, and the danger of not valuing the source of the education.
This raises the question why a "MacDonalds" type degree can’t be developed in
such a way that only one of each kind of qualification can be produced for
global use? There are certain initiatives like this in progress currently eg "The Globe Wide Academy" on the Web!
Besides convenience and political issues, culture
emerged at the ICDE conference as a key determinant in how students want
to learn, how the content should be structured and how the learning experience
should be facilitated.
In the keynote message at the ICDE Conference,
the President of ICDE, Armando Rocha Trinidade (Vice
Chancellor, Open University of Portugal), emphasised
that one of the global trends is the reinforcement of the need for human
interaction - which always involves the culture of the participants who engage
in this interaction.
Nicholas Negroponte also spoke on the changing
technological environment. His belief is that just as co-ed schools for example
can facilitate natural and relaxed communication between the sexes, and
interracial neighbourhoods can facilitate natural and
relaxed communication among people from different races and cultures, so the
Internet is busy creating natural and relaxed communication among nations!
The Net is a distributed phenomenon which emphasises diversity and provides opportunities of
expression for local cultures and languages. The cultural identity on the Net
gets bigger, not smaller. Is it true that most kids come off the Net with more
social skills, not less?
Nicholas Negroponte encouraged participants at
the ICDE Conference to take the role of emotions in communication seriously!
There was a time when purists in sociology and
communication believed that emotions detract and negatively influence the
"true message". However we should not subtract or try to remove
emotions from human communication - instead, it is a very important and natural
part of human communications which should be included in computer mediated
communication!
The challenge is for computer systems, and
computer mediated education systems in particular to accommodate, facilitate
and communicate emotions (be it verbal, body-language or otherwise) as an
integral and vital part of the message.
On-line education can deliver some support for
this aspect through on-line audio and video, emoticons, well-designed icons
etc. - but there is still a long way to go!
10.
What’s happening on the student side?
Huge changes also!
Nowadays students are often better at the
technology than the teachers.
They also want to be recognised
and treated as individuals - distributed on-line education learning can
address rather effectively through appropriate navigational structures, individualised electronic responses and dynamic customised learning systems.
Students want to be participants (not
merely clients) - distributed on-line education learning can facilitate this
using for example the constructivist approach and the "infinite
space" of the Net for exploration and judgment.
Students will increasingly become more like
shoppers in a global educational supermarket which delivers not at their door,
but in their bedroom from anywhere in the world!
The issue of credits transfer and certification
are huge, but models are emerging which seems to work eg
Open Learning Australia (OLA) where more than 20 Australian Universities
collaborate in distance education and the qualification is awarded by the
institute at which the student did a certain agreed percentage of the courses.
Credit could increasingly be based on
demonstrating that learning outcomes has been and not how long a student have studied and at what institute. The effect
that this will have on the tradition of indicating that "I have a degree
from ..." might be bigger than we now envisage!
What about students in developing countries who
would like to participate? Many initiatives are being launched to address this
situation. An example from
Another emerging trend is that, in the words of
Dale Spender (in a talk at our campus two weeks ago), that in the emerging
information society the whole population becomes "the student body" -
with manifold implications for all aspects of educational provision eg understanding adult education will become increasingly
important, shorter courses stringed together in certificates (for those who
wish) will be required rather than formal qualifications, new administrative
attitudes and new flexibilities will be required.
11.
The openness and flexibility of Open and flexible learning revisited
Various tertiary educational institutes that
experimented with a very open approach to enrolment and completion, has moved
to a more structured approach because
An approach where grouping and pacing is emphasised in which students have to define their goal more
clearly, seems appropriate (as is the case at the Open University of the
Students can then be grouped and their progress
monitored against their stated goal, while following the appropriate
administrative processes.
It also seems that "student centered"
learning can be applied in the extreme at the exclusion of sound educational
principles, generic student needs, technological feasibilities and effective
administrative issues. While the learner might need to be in the center of the
educational formula, the other necessary aspects to make the formula work, must
be acknowledged and openly taken into account when designing effective
distributed on-line education.
Although some students, especially adults,
prefer distance education because of its flexibility, the accompanying lack of
accountability often leads to a high drop out rate in distance education
courses which is neither satisfying for the student, nor for the academic staff
involved. In conjunction with other communication facilities, periodic on-line
real-time meetings can create, besides addressing social needs, a sense of
accountability and also provide the message that "somebody is interested
in my study success" (a number of self-evaluation checkpoints throughout
an on-line course is another way to address this situation).
A distance education convenor
from Norfolk (in Pennsylvania) said to me that their video conferencing courses
have a 92% retention rate while some research indicates that on-line courses in
the USA only have a 17% retention rate. She believes it is because of the
accountability aspect of "having to be there" at a certain time which
is implicit in their video conferencing courses.
12.
What about on-line teaching and learning resources?
If you access the Web often, are subscribed to
e-mail discussion lists or follow or participate in the news groups, you will
know that huge amounts of resources in all disciplines are multi-plying
on the Net.
A senior lecturer in statistics recently
approached me to create a Web resource which was going to be links to
statistical Web resources and research projects. A week later the person told
me that it was an impossible job and that only the highest quality Web
resources could and will be included!
13. New
terminologies in the making
Some newer terminologies are listed below.
"................. will
make search requests for you at 7 of the major Internet
search engines, visit each link returned by the search engines
(limit
applies), read each page, and save to your hard drive only those
pages that
contain your key words. You can then review all of the Web pages
saved by
................. off-line,
directly in your Netscape Navigator or Internet
Explorer Browser.
It's like having the Internet on your hard
drive!"
Howz that!!
14. Organisational culture and
practice: Quo Vadis?
Can we adequately summarise
these trends at this stage - I would argue no.
Some final comments however might be appropriate
at this stage.....
Dr Barry Munitz,
Chancellor:
On the operational level one can see the need
for large numbers of computer drop in rooms / labs on physical campuses to
cater for on-campus students doing on-line (intranet or Internet) courses.
Workload formulas of academics need to be
revised. They are often based on class contact hours or research output. New
formulas should incorporate aspects like
Intellectual Property rights should be debated and
negotiated as more and more of an academic staff member’s work will be
on-line.
Academics, and tertiary educational institutes
as a whole, often do not respond easily and quickly to change - therefore
acknowledging some of these trends and accepting the inevitable changes can be
a slow process and must be managed with great care.
These trends however will hopefully enable us to
think and research deeply on the appropriate vision, objectives, paradigms and
practice required in order to serve all of our students and communities with
quality education in an emerging information society.
"Do
not be afraid of going slowly,
be
afraid of standing still."
Eastern
Proverb
"The
Universe is full of magical things
patiently waiting for our
wits
to grow sharper."
"In
a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive;
the
"learned" find themselves fully equipped
to
live in a world that no longer exists"
Eric Hoffer
