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Table of Contents:
The Pedagogy of Online Teaching and Learning
HighlightsCourses can be team developed but the faculty member who teaches the course should have first and final say. S/he should be the primary author of the objectives, the key concepts to be taught, and the assignments.The ownership of the on-line course should be shared. The instructor can use it at another institution and the school can assign the teaching of the course to a new instructor. New instructors will normally modify the course but they can also leave modules unchanged. Moving to a new delivery mode can and should include a paradigm shift. The goal is not necessarily to mimic what goes on in the traditional classroom. Information is information and all ways to teach will t work. Technology makes some kinds of teaching modes easier and others more difficult. If you go with the flow, you shift to what works best with the selected technology. What works the leaders in this area recommend shifts from "traditional" teaching paradigms. Two new online paradigms
that appear to work well are text-based computer mediated communication
(CMC) for courses that are traditionally taught in the discussion or seminar
mode, and interactive, graphically based material for courses that are
traditionally taught in the lecture mode. Methods are by no means limited
to these two.
SummaryIn response to faculty concern about the implementation
of technology for teaching, a year-long faculty seminar was convened during
the 1998-99 academic year at the University of Illinois. The seminar consisted
of 16 members from all three University of Illinois campuses (Chicago,
Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign) and was evenly split, for the sake of
scholarly integrity, between "skeptical" and "converted" faculty. The seminar
focused almost entirely on pedagogy. It did not evaluate hardware or software,
nor did it discuss how to provide access to online courses or how to keep
them secure. Rather, the seminar sought to identify what made teaching
to be good teaching, whether in the classroom or online. External speakers
at the leading edge of this discussion also provided pro and con views.
The seminar concluded that online teaching and learning
can be done with high quality if new approaches are employed which compensate
for the limitations of technology, and if professors make the effort to
create and maintain the human touch of attentiveness to their students.
Online courses may be appropriate for both traditional and non-traditional
students; they can be used in undergraduate education, continuing education,
and in advanced degree programs. The seminar participants thought, however,
that it would be inappropriate to provide an entire undergraduate degree
program online. Participants concluded that the ongoing physical and even
emotional interaction between teacher and students, and among students
themselves, was an integral part of a university education.
Because high quality online teaching is time and labor
intensive, it is not likely to be the income source envisioned by some
administrators. Teaching the same number of students online at the same
level of quality as in the classroom requires more time and money.
From our fundamental considerations of pedagogy we
have prepared a list of practice-oriented considerations for professors
who might be interested in teaching online, and another list for administrators
considering expanding online course offerings.
Practical Considerations for Faculty:
The fraction of "nontraditional" students is not as
high as some make it out to be, but is still significant. Stemming from
the baby boomlet, the number of young, "traditional" students will be as
high or higher than ever through the next decade. Many contexts of online
course delivery given in Table 5, for professional training/continuing
education, undergraduate education, and graduate education for both traditional
and nontraditional students, are viable. There are several exceptions:
first, certain types of advanced graduate work cannot be performed online,
and second, traditional students benefit from the maturing, socializing
component of an undergraduate college education and this requires an on-campus
presence.
Attempts are being made to use instructional technology
such as real-time two-way videoconferencing in attempts to simulate the
traditional classroom. With improvements in technology this mode may yet
succeed, but from what we have seen, the leaders in this area recommend
shifts from "traditional" teaching paradigms. Two new online paradigms
that appear to work well are text-based computer mediated communication
(CMC) for courses that are traditionally taught in the discussion or seminar
mode, and interactive, graphically based material for courses that are
traditionally taught in the lecture mode. Methods are by no means limited
to these two.
High quality teaching online requires smaller student/faculty
ratios. The shift from the classroom to online has been described as a
shift from "efficiency to quality." We also believe a motivational human
touch must come into play as well in the online environment as it does
in the classroom. Students should feel they are members of a learning community
and derive motivation to engage in the material at hand from the attentiveness
of the instructor.
Quality is best assured when ownership of developed
materials remains in the hands of faculty members. The University of Illinois'
Intellectual Property Subcommittee Report on Courseware Development and
Distribution recommends that written agreement between the courseware creator
and the administration be made in advance of any work performed. Evaluation
of learning effectiveness is also a means to ensure high quality. We suggest
a broad array of evaluation areas that includes, but is not limited to,
a comparison of learning competence with the traditional classroom.
Policy Issues for Administrators
On any issue involving pedagogy, faculty members committed
to teaching should have the first and last say. On the other hand, faculty
must be held responsible for good teaching. Online courses should not be
motivated by poor instructor performance in large classes.
Teaching innovation should be expected, respected,
and rewarded as an important scholarly activity. At the same time, not
all classes are amenable to online delivery.
To ensure the quality of a course, it is essential
that knowledgeable, committed faculty members continue to have responsibility
for course content and delivery. Therefore, intellectual property policies
should allow for faculty ownership of online courseware. The commissioning
of courses from temporary instructors should be avoided, and the university
should be wary of partnerships with education providers in which faculty
members have commercial interests.
The scenario of hundreds or thousands of students enrolling
in a well developed, essentially instructor-free online course does not
appear realistic, and efforts to do so will result in wasted time, effort,
and expense. With rare exceptions, the successful online courses we have
seen feature low student to faculty ratios. Those rare exceptions involve
extraordinary amounts of the professor's time. And besides the initial
investment in the technology, technical support for professors and students
and maintenance of hardware and software are quite expensive.
Online teaching has been said to be a shift from "efficiency"
to "quality," and quality usually doesn't come cheaply. Sound online instruction
is not likely to cost less than traditional instruction. On the other hand,
some students may be willing to pay more for the flexibility and perhaps
better instruction of high quality online courses. This is the case for
a growing number of graduate level business-related schools. However, it
is likely that a high number of "traditional" students, including the baby
boomlet, will continue to want to pay for a directly attentive professor
and the on-campus social experience.
In the short term, before history answers this question,
we think that a rigorous comparison of learning competence with traditional
classrooms can and should be done. High quality online teaching is not
just a matter of transferring class notes or a videotaped lecture to the
Internet; new paradigms of content delivery are needed. Particular features
to look for in new courses are the strength of professor-student and student-student
interactions, the depth at which students engage in the material, and the
professor's and students' access to technical support. Evidence of academic
maturity, such as critical thinking and synthesis of different areas of
knowledge should be present in more extensive online programs.
At the University of Illinois, as at many others, the
call has arisen to teach with timely technology. In October 1997, President
James J. Stukel promulgated this vision statement (Stukel 1997):
"Towards full realization of our enduring core values, the University of Illinois will lead nationally in creating, assessing, transferring, and integrating advanced technologies, in our research, teaching, outreach and operations."This direct reference to online teaching was made: "...Indeed, the Internet, and the technology which supports it, may well constitute the third modern revolution in higher education. The land-grant movement in the Nineteenth Century brought access to higher education to the middle class. The community college movement of the Twentieth Century brought universal access to higher education. The technology revolution of the Twenty-first Century can bring access to all beyond the bounds of time and place." On the crest of the computer revolution, and especially
with the advent of the Internet, the academy is asking how technology might
be utilized to improve the teaching and learning of university students.
How can high quality "teaching at an Internet distance" or "online teaching"
be assured? Just where does the traditional "face to face" classroom sit
in the sea of information technology? Taken to the extreme, will bricks
and mortar be wholly replaced by fiber optic cable and PCs? In the last
chapter of "Learning Networks," co-authored by four of the pioneers of
computer mediated communication (Harasim et al., 1995), the authors imagine
such startling possibilities as statewide closure of community college
systems.
Following President Stukel's statement, a number of
the faculty voiced concern about this "vision." For example, in response
to what he believed was too much top-down implementation of technology
in U of I classrooms without due consideration to pedagogy, John Regalbuto
of UIC's Chemical Engineering Department wrote (Regalbuto 1998a):
"My concern is this: the essence of teaching is the relationship established between a professor and his or her students. Great teachers may well be able to establish great rapport over a distance... But...great teachers have not been approached as a body to help plan the implementation of distance learning. ...I believe a sanctioned study by...(a) committee of great teachers will provide assurance for the faculty as a whole and will yield valuable insight and meaningful direction for the implementation of distance learning." In response to the concern represented by this letter,
then Vice President of Academic Affairs Sylvia Manning proposed a scholarly
study of "Teaching at an Internet Distance (TID)," or the pedagogy of online
learning, in the form of a faculty seminar. The seminar mode, as opposed
to a committee, was adopted to emphasize the learning to be experienced
by its members. The seminar was not to focus on practical matters like
security or software. The "seminar should avoid matters of governance,
personnel policy and technical issues such as registration. It should focus
exclusively on pedagogy and the quality of the educational experience,
including both student and faculty satisfaction." (Manning 1998) From the
beginning, hardware, software, and technical support were assumed to be
free of any shortcoming, so that the discussion would remain entirely on
pedagogy. And yet, from this fundamental consideration of pedagogy there
should arise some practical guidelines for those faculty wishing to implement
online teaching (Manning 1998, Regalbuto 1998b).
A group representing 16 different colleges on the three
U of I campuses (Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign) was assembled,
with the one common criterion that members be "outstanding and highly committed
teachers" (Manning 1998). A complete list of the TID faculty members is
found in the appended seminar syllabus. To ensure academic balance, a roughly
even split was made between the "converted" or online-using or advocating
faculty, and "skeptical" or online-doubting professors. (The point was
made early on that this distinction was not so accurate; skepticism in
some had arisen not out of a distrust of technology, but because the pedagogy
of online teaching had not yet been considered. From that standpoint, the
"skeptics" simply felt they were "sitting on the fence" (JR 1998b)).
Over the course of the 1998-99 academic year, the faculty
seminar met in face-to-face retreats and via videoconference, and with
invited speakers chosen to represent both "converted" and "skeptical" bents.
The list of seminar speakers and links that provide additional information
about them are given below in Table 1.
Table 1. Seminars Presented to the TID Faculty Seminar
At the opening retreat, the fundamental pedagogical nature of the seminar was once again confirmed in lieu of a more "nuts and bolts" discussion of immediately practical issues. As one member, an associate dean, put it, "I deal with practical issues every day. I want to do the fun stuff!" Discussions of the elements of good teaching did indeed invigorate this group. Reviewing the literature, it appears that few other groups have done the "fun stuff." The widely circulated "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" paper by Chickering and Gamson (1987) of the American Association for Higher Education has been updated with technology in mind (Chickering and Ehrman, 1997) in a brief document titled "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever." Both of these documents will be reviewed in detail later. The American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) has similarly derived a set of Guiding Principles for Distance Teaching and Learning www.adec.edu/admin/papers/distance-teaching_principles.html. In April of 1999 the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association commissioned a comprehensive review of distance learning research from the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). Published under the title "What's the Difference: A Review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education" (Phipps and Merisotis, 1999), the IHEP report incorporates the comprehensive evaluation of Russell (1999). The ADEC and IHEP works focus on evaluation and not the formulation of pedagogy. Perhaps the closest work to our own is another set of guiding principles developed by Lawrence Ragan of the Innovations in Distance Education Project at Penn State (Ragan, 1998). Part of this project involved a faculty initiative of which the culminating work was the "Emerging Set of Guiding Principles and Practices," which "provide a philosophical foundation for the design and development of educational programming at a distance." Three stages in the study of online pedagogy were initially suggested (Regalbuto, 1998b): 1) a kick-off retreat and ensuing webboard discussion on the elements of good teaching, to consider if any "essence" could and should be translated to online teaching, 2) presentations from within the group and from external speakers on the educational theory and practice of good online teaching, and 3) presentations from those who have evaluated online teaching with respect to the traditional classroom. The idea was to try to understand good practices of online pedagogy through steps 1 and 2, so as to be able to anticipate the successes and failures of online programs seen in step 3. As will be described in subsequent sections, online evaluation is inherently difficult and published results are ambiguous and scant. Thus, our seminar's understanding of online pedagogy could not be "tested" to any great extent, although we do offer some thoughts on evaluation in section 6. On the other hand, the first and second stages were accomplished with sufficient thoroughness that we believe we can suggest to the University of Illinois community and beyond, in section 8, a number of online teaching and learning recommendations that uphold sound pedagogy. Bonk and Cunningham (1998) state "The lack of pedagogical guidance about integrating tools for collaboration and communication into one's classroom or training setting leaves instructors across educational settings with mounting dilemmas and confusion." We hope that our efforts to study online pedagogy will provide part of the "pragmatism" needed to rectify "dilemmas" occurring in the implementation and evaluation of instructional technology. In particular, we seek to provide guidance for high-quality online instruction that will increase what students can effectively learn online and, we hope, will provide direction to universities on how to spend their funds wisely in this area. In this report, "online instruction" refers to teaching
and learning mediated by a computer. Online instruction implies a connection
to a computer system at a venue distinct from the learner's personal computer;
this venue can be across the world or across campus. Computer mediated
communication (CMC) is the term preferred by Linda Harasim and co-authors
(1995) to connote the interactive textual exchange in learning networks.
A related term is computer mediated instruction, or CMI. Learning networks
are comprised of professors and students communicating with each other
in real time (synchronously) or off-line and sequentially (asynchronously).
Computer assisted instruction (CAI) is normally applied to the "drill and
practice" type of computerized instruction (Harasim et al., 1995, Kowalski,
1998) as used for military training or elementary education, in which little
if any two way exchange of ideas occurs. While the term "distance education"
can also be used for CMC, CMI, or CAI, in the last few years it has most
generally been used to connote "correspondence coursework" utilizing textual,
videotape, or CD materials exchanged by mail, or courses presented over
the television or via videoconference.
Online teaching and learning occurs in a range of modes.
Briefly, these modes, in order of an increasing computer component, are
1) supplemental or adjunct, 2) mixed, and 3) wholly online. (For a not-so-brief,
ten-part gradation, see Bonk and Cummings et al., 1999) A good example
of the adjunct mode is the approach of John Etchemendy of Stanford. In
his presentation to us he demonstrated how new paradigms of teaching, in
particular for geometry (Geometer's Sketchpad,
www.keypress.com/Pages/Prod_Sketchpad.html),
logic (Tarski's World, hyapatia.stanford.edu/hp/Logic-software.html#Tarski)
and computability (Turing's World, hypatia.stanford.edu/hp/Logic-software.html#Turing),
were possible only with the interactive graphics of a computer. This is
a very significant point, which should be mentioned early and often - computers
beget novel and powerful teaching tools. In his demonstration of Geometer's
Sketchpad, which is used in junior high education, his point was that not
only can geometry students learn to prove geometric theorems, but also
by manipulating geometric figures with great facility and clarity, the
student can see how new theorems are thought of in the first place.
The deeper consideration is of course how the computer
tool is utilized for class teaching. The title of Etchemendy's seminar
was "Technology to Enhance the Classroom, Not Replace It." He used his
software packages as supplements to his face-to-face classroom teaching,
noting that the material explored by each package was only one part of
a larger body of course content.
Success with the adjunct mode may lead to a transition
to mixed mode. For example, Jerry Uhl of UIUC's math department became
so convinced that the interactive experience provided by Mathematica-based
courseware was superior, that he no longer teaches calculus with lectures
(Uhl, 1997). His students are all on-campus, and meet in the classroom
only infrequently for follow up discussion of the computer courseware.
In like manner, Pat Shapley of the UIUC Chemistry department developed
visualizations of organic chemistry to the extent that she now offers a
junior level course in organic chemistry in mixed mode. Again, the majority
of the teaching and learning occurs though the Internet, and the class
meets once weekly to cover problematic areas. The pedagogy of both of these
courses will be discussed later in section 5.
Courses and even whole degree programs can be delivered essentially wholly online. Such is the mode of the site-independent M.S. in library and information science (LEEP3) program of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at UIUC, a distance alternative to on-campus programs for the same degree. Participants in LEEP3 are mainly place-bound individuals working in libraries. Different instructors, all with apparently good success, devote different amounts of time to synchronous sessions (employing real-time audio, web site viewing, and text chat) and asynchronous conferencing. Again, the pedagogy behind this program will be discussed in the later section. A Survey of Online Programs and ResourcesDue to the rapid growth of online courses and whole
degree programs, it is impossible to list precisely the current number
of these courses and programs. In April of 1999 the New York Times estimated
that online courses number in the thousands (Koeppel, 1999) and listed
a sampling of 11 accredited institutions making significant online inroads.
These are given below in Table 2.
Table 2. A Sampling of Universities Offering Online Programs
There have also appeared a number of journals and professional communities devoted to online or distance education. These are given in Tables 3 and 4 respectively along with some descriptive remarks. Table 3. A Survey of Online and Distance Learning Journals
Table 4. A Survey of Professional Communities for Online and Distance Learning
Internet-based education is very much in the forecast for the State of Illinois generally and the University of Illinois higher administration in particular. In April 1999 President Stukel declared "online education is part of our future and, like the early concepts that created land-grant universities, it is idealism at its best" (Stukel, 1999); reaffirming the "high bar" set by Burks Oakley, II, the associate vice president for academic affairs, of "achieving 10,000 online enrollments by academic year 2001-02" (Stukel, 1999). Stukel's goals reflect the current wave of enthusiasm for technology-mediated education found within the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Illinois General Assembly. The IBHE recently announced a $405 million plan for cutting-edge Internet technology for Illinois colleges and universities (IBHE 1999a). The plan promises to make Illinois "a national leader in Internet-based education, and to extend high-speed Internet service to communities not yet wired for fiber optic connections." The plan calls for the creation of the Illinois Century Network, which would link every higher education institution in Illinois to a very high bandwidth network. The proposed network would link these schools to elementary and secondary education institutions, public libraries, hospitals, governments, industry, small business and individual citizens. The IBHE envisions the Illinois Century Network as a way to (1999a) ...bring education to students, training to workers, and counsel to people in business, government, agriculture, health care, and a variety of other fields. It will be a telecommunications pipeline sufficiently big, fast, and reliable to transform education - and hence fuel economic success for Illinois and its citizens - in the next century, and will.... position Illinois at the head of the states in competing in a global economy increasingly trafficking in information and technology.According to the IBHE, a key feature of the Network will be "the nature of its learning environment and the freshness of its information. The Network will stress its high-quality real-time interactive capability, thus engaging the learner as an active participant in the learning. Also, development of the Network will include the technological support needed to continuously update curriculum" (IBHE 1999a). Funding from the Illinois General Assembly, the state's legislative body, seems to endorse this sentiment. For fiscal years 1997 and 1998, it appropriated $10 million and $15 million, respectively, for technology enhancements in the State's institutes of higher education; and an additional $15 million in each of fiscal years 1997 through 1999 for a statewide telecommunications grant initiative. The University of Illinois fared well in the distribution of technology enhancements funding, receiving $1, 393,400 in FY 1997 and another $2,148,300 in FY 1998. While no new appropriations for technology enhancements were made in FY 1999 (IBHE 1999b), for FY 2000 the Governor's recommended budget included $4.3 million to the University of Illinois for a variety of technology enhancements, that include equipment and infrastructure improvements as well as content development, faculty training programs and expansion of UI-Online initiative. Overall the Governor recommended an increase of $918 million in new general funds for state activities in FY 2000 - a growth rate of 4.6% - while recommending an increase of 6.2% or $137 million for higher education. This commitment to higher education may be indicative of a national trend among states toward renewed support for higher education. A report prepared for the National Conference of State Legislatures during fiscal year 1997 states (NCSL 1999): "After receiving steady cuts since 1990, higher education funding is on the rise. This year (1997) higher education will account for about 12% of state budgets - a growth of 6.2 percent - the largest increase since the late 1980s."The higher percentage of dollars going toward higher education will likely include funding for technology as a way of training and educating the work force to compete within a global economy. Adverse Faculty ReactionNot all online ventures are experiencing the degree
of success that was originally anticipated. After investments of millions
of dollars and years of preparation and planning, the Western Governors
University, a completely online operation, had a first semester enrollment
of only 10 students (Noble, 1998c). The Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
recently reported that the California's Virtual University, a consortium
of public and independent colleges, would cease operations as an independent
distance education institution (Blumenstyk, 1999). In the third of a series
of articles, "Digital Diploma Mills" (Noble, 1998c), David Noble relates
how concerned faculty in the California State University (CSU) system defeated
the California Educational Technology Initiative (CETI), which would have
created a business deal between CSU and a consortium of computer firms
such as Microsoft, GTE, Hughes, and Fujitsu. Noble also reports that at
UCLA, the Instructional Enhancement Initiative, which mandated web sites
for all arts and sciences courses, has "floundered in the face of faculty
recalcitrance and resistance." Less than 30 percent of the faculty had
complied by year's end, and several dozen had actively resisted the Initiative
(Noble 1998c). At the University of Washington, 900 faculty members last
year signed an open letter in opposition to the Governor's "digital education"
initiatives (Noble 1998c). Going even further, the faculty at York University
in Toronto struck for two months against administrative initiatives in
the implementation of instructional technology (Noble, 1998a).
Several of our speakers were able to shed light on
the cause of this rising tide of faculty opposition to computer mediated
instruction. Andrew Feenberg of San Diego State University summarizes the
situation in the opening paragraph of his "Distance Learning: Promise or
Threat" (1999) article:
"Once the stepchild of the academy, distance learning is finally taken seriously. But not in precisely the way early innovators like myself had hoped. It is not faculty who are in the forefront of the movement to network education. Instead politicians, university administrations and computer and telecommunications companies have decided there is money in it. But proposals for a radical "retooling" of the university emanating from these sources are guaranteed to provoke instant faculty hostility."Feenberg argues that administrators are mainly concerned about the money-making potential of online instruction, and are being directed by vendors to high-priced instruments of the wrong sort. This in turn at least partly explains the ire of committed teachers. The faculty at San Diego State was part of the revolt against CETI, and Feenberg relates that during a visit to SDSU by Charles Reed, the chancellor of the statewide University of California system, Feenberg asked what the pedagogical model that had guided CETI was. The chancellor replied, "We've got the engineering plan. It's up to you faculty to figure out what to do with it." (Feenberg, 1999) We might say that any administration's lead in implementing technology in the classroom runs the risk of "technology driving pedagogy," when true concern for education dictates that "pedagogy drive technology." Indeed, Feenberg's sentiments in this article seem to parallel Regalbuto's in his vision statement response (1998a) and those of our seminar as a whole. To proceed any further, we must back up more. How is it that commercial concerns figure so prominently, often above those of faculty, in the decisions of university administrators? Janice Newson of York University suggested to us that the introduction of educational technologies by administrators is only a current symptom of a more fundamental transformation occurring in universities. In her article "Technopedagogy: A Critical Sighting of the Post-Industrial University" (Newson, 1996) she describes an inversion of the leadership roles of faculty and administration: "Although faculty have continued to participate in academic governance structures such as senates and faculty councils, more and more policy is formulated in and by the expanded and increasingly professional/executive offices of senior administrators, with the faculty bodies acting as ratifiers, rather than originators of these policies."Driven by the fiscal restraint imposed by government on the higher education sector, economics is now a chief component of administrative decision-making. This policy of "economic rationalism" has the two components of "budget-based rationalization," which includes the expansion and differentiation of a professional management apparatus, and "university-corporate linking," of the sort described earlier. The net effect is an attempt at what Noble refers to as "the commoditization of education" (Noble 1998a). In his first Digital Diploma Mills article (Noble 1998a) he relates how Wall Street investment firms are presently eyeing the big business of higher education in the same way the health profession was eyed previously. (In a recent paper presented at the Digital Diploma Mills conference, Christopher Oberg (1998) pointed out that education is a huge business with a budget well over $200 billion dollars in 1997.) As the health industry was hammered into the money making mold of health maintenance organizations (HMOs), so is it desired that higher education become the controlled, commoditized and moneymaking enterprises of educational maintenance organizations (EMOs). In a recent criticism of distance learning (Farber, 1998) a 1997 Coopers and Lybrand white paper is cited which claims that "a mere 25 courses," packaged as instructional software, "would serve an estimated 80 percent of total undergraduate enrollment in core undergraduate courses... Distributed learning involves only a small number of professors, but has the potential to reach a huge market of students" (Farber, 1998). Controversy has also arisen over the linking of schools with commercial instructional providers. For example, Columbia University (McGeehan, 1999, Blumenstyk, 1999) and the University of Chicago (McGeehan, 1999, Blumenstyk, 1999, Jones and Grossman, 1999) have recently become affiliated with UNext.com, in which the school or individual faculty members hold financial interests. Controversy even extends to one of the pioneers of online teaching, Harasim of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Several years ago Harasim became CEO and Network Leader of the Telelearning Network of Centres of Excellence, a research network linking Canadian researchers and members of public and private sector communities. In these cases, a conflict of interest arises between the delivery of sound pedagogy and the sale of educational technology. The implementation of online education shows both promise and peril. Computer mediated instruction may indeed introduce new and highly effective teaching paradigms, but high-quality teaching is not always assured. Administrative decisions made without due consideration to pedagogy, or worse, with policies or technology that hampers quality, may cause much wasted time, money and effort of both faculty and students. We professors are partly to blame for the current situation. Feenberg admonishes us in this way (Feenberg, 1999): ...The failure of faculties to demand the right and privilege of teaching returning [nontraditional] students, to innovate new formats appropriate to their needs, and to exercise control of their education has led to the current situation.... The faculty must accept responsibility now for shaping distance learning, and in the process, it should also attempt to reclaim ground lost in the development of programs for returning students.Lehigh's president, Gregory Farrington, provides another prod in a recent issue of the New York Times (Mendels, 1999a): If administrators and faculty members are wise, ...they will view the advent of the Internet not as a threat, but as a chance to launch an overdue examination of teaching methods. We've become a bit monopolistic, a bit complacent.... We've put too little of our energy into focusing on the challenge of how we create the most effective learning environment at the undergraduate level. We know how we want to teach. We too seldom discuss how do students best learn. While there are as many modes of instruction as there
are varieties of students, we will attempt to generalize a few categories
of each so that a number of options for online instruction can be fashioned
and discussed within an orderly framework.
Types of Online EducationFirst, we might generalize the instructional modes
into four types: training, education toward an undergraduate degree, continuing
education, and graduate work. In the previous section, computer assisted
instruction was associated with "drill and practice" training. The market
for this mode appears to be significant. For example, the Illinois Fire
Service Institute (IFSI), based at UIUC, has plans to put the cognitive
portion of their "Firefighter II" certification online this year through
UI Online. Last year, IFSI provided training for 18,000 professional and
volunteer firefighters in Illinois.
In training, a particular package of knowledge is imparted
to an individual so that he or she can assume work within a system, as
the firefighters do for example. According to Noble, training and education
are appropriately distinguished in terms of autonomy (Noble, 1999). In
becoming trained, an individual relinquishes autonomy. The purpose of education,
as compared to training, is to impart autonomy to the student. In teaching
students to think critically, we say in effect "Student, know thyself."
Education is not just the transmission of knowledge, important as that
is, but also has to do with the transformation of persons (and the development
of critical thinking skills).
John Dewey's theory of learning and growth fits neatly
into place here. In a wide-ranging set of influential books and articles
(Dewey 1960, 1980, 1997) Dewey urges educators to think of learning as
at once both social and cognitive. Persons do not learn, he argues, in
the way that sponges absorb water. Persons are changed, however subtly,
by everything they learn. Dewey captures a powerful image of liberal learning
when he shows how an adequate learning theory must embody the education
of the mind, body, emotions, and spirit.
Classrooms and offices, dorm rooms and pubs are necessary
for this most important part of education. In the recent book "Dancing
with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher
Education" (Farrington, 1999), Lehigh's President Gregory Farrington addresses
the social dimension of undergraduate education as follows:
...undergraduate life at a residential college is as much about learning to live as it is about learning from books.... Eighteen-year-old students nervously tiptoe onto campus at the start of their first year, and four years later they march out - sometimes after a bit of prodding, to be sure, but generally with the motivation, education, and confidence needed to take on the world. The transformation is remarkable and is as much the product of the general intellectual and social experience on campus as the result of what goes on formally in the classroom. For these students, late-night discussions are much of what college is about, and the role of the football team is truly important. It is hard to imagine distance education, however effective, being truly equivalent. Next, we consider postgraduate education. Continuing
education and lifelong learning are imprecise terms that might connote
something as simple as a weeklong technical workshop or as extensive as
a part-time advanced professional degree program scheduled around a full-time
job. The former example might be considered professional training, as in
the case of a chemical engineer at an oil company who spends a week learning
the practical intricacies of distillation tower design. Professional seminars
or workshops can be developed from within the company, but can also be
offered to private industry by a team of university faculty members. For
example, chemical engineering and chemistry faculty at the University of
Delaware offer a yearly workshop in industrial catalysis. The U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention have funded the Schools of Health at
four universities - Johns Hopkins, Emory, Tulane, and Washington - to offer
distance-based certificate programs to meet the unique needs of public
health practitioners who require continuing education to meet the demands
of a rapidly changing environment.
In these contexts the student is typically a mature
professional dealing with complex subject material not suitable for "drill
and practice." Certainly, none of the social component is needed here.
Likewise for continuing education in the form of advanced degrees; students
have already gained a great deal of socialization through their first degree,
and less of this is needed unless the student has switched fields and needs
socialization in the new field. In lieu of the socializing component, many
graduate students must learn to perform research, and this learning component
distinguishes graduate school from both undergraduate work and professional
training. In many cases it may be argued that the nuances of a field and
the performance of research within it must be learned under the personal
mentorship of a research advisor. This need, as well as the actual performance
of experimental research, greatly constrains the means of delivery of many
types of graduate level work.
Research and mentorship considerations notwithstanding,
demand appears to be significant for advanced online degrees (see Table
2). Michael Beller and Ehud Or of The Open University of Israel, in the
Journal
of Computer Mediated Communication (JCMC), argue that the need for
specialized lifelong learning by individuals scattered across the globe
is matched by the distributed accessibility of online instruction (1998).
As examples, Stanford maintains a successful master of engineering program
taught in the "distance education" mode (but which is converting to online
education), with about 5000 students. The University of Phoenix is currently
delivering online offerings including BA's and MBA's to 8500 professionals
in 13 states and Puerto Rico. The online master's degree offered by the
Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at UIUC also
fits this category. Students from as far away as Anchorage, Alaska, are
enrolled in the online GSLIS program.
The four types of online instruction might be summarized
as follows: training is the transmission of knowledge, education is the
imparting of perspective, professional training might then be considered
the "training of the educated," and graduate education is the "training
and mentorship of the educated." As the mode of instruction is related
to the type of student and university, we now need to take a look at student
demographics. From the entire pool of college students, how many might
benefit from and might afford the various types of online instruction?
Types of Online StudentsThere are two main groups of students. The "traditional"
student is young (often straight out of high school), full time or significantly
part-time, and attends face-to-face classes. This category would include
both two and four year institutions. It is with the traditional student
that we associate the need for socialization in college. A "mature" or
"nontraditional" student might be older, working full time, and might already
possess one or more degrees. By virtue of their state in life nontraditional
students are more place-bound than traditional students, whether to a home
in which children are cared for, or by a job location. This category also
includes the "young" nontraditional student who is also place-bound, as
for example, an advanced student at a small and understaffed rural high
school who seeks an advanced course in college math or physics. In either
case, though for different reasons, socialization is not a requisite of
the college level education that each of these students might receive at
a distance. With the mature student, it has already occurred, and with
the young student, it will occur at a later stage.
The varieties of students, modes of instruction, and
corresponding options for online delivery can be generalized as in Table
5. Of course the categories in this table are by no means definitive; they
have been formulated only to help with ensuing discussion. Seven areas
have been delineated - four instructional modes and two types of students
for each, excepting "traditional" continuing education which by definition
does not occur. Online teaching is not just for the nontraditional, place-bound
student. Adjunct and mixed modes are possible, and these by definition
are available only in traditional settings. Universities and education
providers have began to realize that significant numbers of students subscribing
to totally online courses are in fact to be found on-campus; this includes
UIC's own School of Public Health.
Table 5. Seven Contexts for Online Instruction
Our next consideration is the distribution of traditional and nontraditional students. Contradictory interpretations exist in the literature. A ratio being cited in the online learning literature is that only 1/6 of all college students are in the 18-22 year old range and live on campus (for example, see Applebome, 1999). Taken at face value this figure implies high demand from non-traditional students, and supports the anytime-anywhere feature of asynchronous online instruction. However, this interpretation does not appear to be supported by statistics of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U. S. Department of Education (NCES 1997). A close look at these figures suggests that "nontraditional" students, while significant in number, are in a minority1. The 1/6th fraction does not in fact refer to the number of "traditional" students, neglecting for example young students at 2-year institutions, and students attending 4-year institutions, but living off campus. These students are hardly "nontraditional" and are no more or less in need of distance learning than residential students. Projected enrollments in the NCES report are also at odds with the thinking of many online implementers. The enrollment of students 30 years old and over is predicted to level off after 1996, through 2007, and the enrollment of the 22-24 and 25-29 year old segments is predicted to increase slightly in this time. It is only the enrollment of students under 22 that shows a dramatic increase in this nine year span, from about 5.8 million to over 7 million (NCES 1997). From 1995 to 2007, NCES projects a rise of 20 percent in enrollments of persons under 25 and an increase of 4 percent in the number 25 and over. In light of the NCES data it does not appear that the "traditional student" is a minority at all. The number of "nontraditional" students, on the other hand, is indeed significant. Twenty five percent of all undergraduate students are over thirty, and 23 percent of all graduate students are over 40 (NCES 1997, Table 175). Almost 60 percent of graduate students are part time. That the ratio of nontraditional to traditional students does not appear to be so exaggerated as some suggest does not imply that the demand for online learning is low. Online instruction benefits both types of students, in a variety of the contexts listed in Table 5. Some types of instruction would work better for each type of student. For example, nontraditional students might benefit from wholly online instruction while traditional students might typically do best with the adjunct or mixed mode. In the following sections we look at pedagogy, both traditional and online, to see what sorts of high-quality online instruction are possible and to get a rough idea about costs. In our recommendations (section 8) we will consider these contexts in light of sound pedagogy and the mission of the University of Illinois. Does good teaching in the classroom translate to good
teaching online? If so, what elements can be translated and which ones
can't or shouldn't? At first it might seem that the essence of good teaching
in the classroom is impossible to distill, as there are many different
styles of teaching and many different styles of learning. While a professor
of English literature might be at her or his best in a seminar, a nursing
or medicine professor might best lead his or her class in a clinical setting.
Science and engineering professors might give rousing lectures or lead
students through illuminating laboratory experiments. In addition to different
teaching styles, students have different strengths in the ways they learn.
Many taxonomies of learning styles exist, including Kolb's Learning Style
Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Inventory, and Soloman's Inventory of Learning
Styles (Montgomery 1998). Soloman's Inventory, for example, classifies
learning styles along four dimensions: processing, where learners are either
active or reflective, perception (sensing or intuitive), input (visual
or verbal) and understanding (sequential or global). But, in fact, many
authors have suggested that there are indeed ways to distill the essence
of good teaching. For example, a set of online teaching guidelines that
resulted from Penn State's Innovations in Distance Education Project, "Good
Teaching is Good Teaching: an Emerging Set of Guiding Principles and Practices
for the Design and Development of Distance Education" (Ragan 1998), reads:
"The shared mantra of the faculty and staff during the development of this document was that "good teaching is good teaching!" An Emerging Set of Guiding Principles... is less about distance education and more about what makes for an effective educational experience, regardless of where or when it is delivered."Similarly, the first basic assumption of the American Distance Education Consortium's "ADEC Guiding Principles for Distance Teaching and Learning" is that "The principles that lend themselves to quality face-to-face learning environments are often similar to those found in web-based environments" (ADEC 1999). Finally, the hallmark document "The Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (Chickering and Gamson, 1987) published by the American Association for Higher Education, was revised for online teaching by taking each of the original seven principles, and applying them to computer mediated instruction. The seven principles retain their centrality in "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever" (Chickering and Ehrman, 1998). Traditional Classroom TeachingGood teaching can take many forms, although not just
any form. If there were an essence of good teaching it would have to be
found independent of and beyond teaching and learning styles. Such are
the seven principles of good practice of Chickering and Gamson (1987).
They are given below:
As it happens, one of our seminar members, David Hansen
of UIC's education department, has distilled the practice of teaching to
an even greater extent (Hansen 1998, Hansen 1999). Hansen characterizes
the practice of good teaching by a twofold "attentiveness;" attentiveness
to the intellectual and to the moral formation of the student. Of the former
sort he writes "...being intellectually attentive means focusing as closely
as the teacher can on what students know, feel, and think about the subject
at hand" (Hansen, 1999). And of the latter, "teacher's moral attentiveness
has two components: alertness to the development of their students' character,
and awareness of their own regard for and treatment of students" (Hansen,
1999). These statements align well with Jerry Farber's "three circle" model,
which states that intellectual attentiveness builds total competence, while
moral attentiveness provides the spark for the process of socialization
(1998).
The essence of good teaching might be summed up as
the teacher's concern that his or her students become educated. On one
hand this implies that the teacher will put much thought into the presentation
of the material and its human impact. This is where research expertise
of professors at research-oriented universities comes into play. Good teachers
promote cognition by organizing content and by assigning activities (homework,
labs, projects, papers, and so on) that reach students with various learning
styles. On the other hand, good teachers pay attention to how well the
students are learning the material and developing a broad perspective of
it. In short, we can say that a good university professor takes an interest
in both teaching and learning.
Why is attentiveness so necessary? From the complementary
side of things, how are students affected by the attentiveness of a good
teacher? The answer may have to do with student motivation. In the "Seven
Principles" document (Chickering and Gamson, 1987), the discussion after
the first point (Good practice encourages student-faculty contact) reads:
Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of class is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement. Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students' intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans.Again, there is a connection to Farber's role of episodic memory here; a student's close contact with a faculty member can go a long way. Hansen has also described how attentiveness induces motivation. In doing so, he quotes Michael Oakeshott (1989): Being taken seriously by a teacher in a natural, unforced way can promote a student's own seriousness of mind and purpose. Michael Oakeshott suggests that a quality like seriousness of mind "is never explicitly learned and it is known only in practice; but it may be learned in everything that is learned, in the carpentry shop as well as in the Latin or chemistry lesson." Such a quality cannot be taught directly, either. Here is Oakeshott again: "[A quality like seriousness of mind] cannot be taught overtly, by precept, because it comprises what is required to animate precept; but it may be taught in everything that is taught. It is implanted unobtrusively in the manner in which information is conveyed, in a tone of voice, in the gesture which accompanies instruction, in asides and oblique utterances, and by example." So in general, attentiveness on the part of the instructor
motivates students to engage in the material at hand, and beyond. It must
be noted, however, that the need for motivation is a function of the student's
age and background, intellectual capacity, and psychological makeup. This
ties back in with student types; the mature nontraditional student is inherently
more self-motivated than the young, traditional student, and so perhaps
less in need of the instructor's attentiveness. One of our seminar members
recounted a deep, vivid two-hour discussion among his graduate students,
during which he simply sat back the entire period and listened with great
satisfaction.
Apart from the professor, students also derive much
motivation from each other. The following comment on the second of the
Seven Principles (Good practice encourages cooperation among students,
Chickering and Gamson, 1987) directly pertains to the effect of peers:
Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions improves thinking and deepens understanding.While this statement mainly addresses the cognitive advantages of collaborative learning (improved thinking and deepened understanding) it also touches on motivation (increased involvement in learning). For their part, professors may be thought to "catalyze" motivation among groups of students. And motivation can of course come from many sources apart from the school, such as professional goals, friends and family members. Finally, motivation can be imparted to the student in a variety of ways. Highly motivating professors are not necessarily the most exuberant or gregarious or witty. The behind-the-scenes efforts of a quiet but dedicated professor, in assembling supplementary material or following up students' questions will also demonstrate to the students the professor's concern. In small classes it is possible to come to know and motivate each student individually. Yet in large classes where this is impossible, an "intimate bond" with the class is still achieved if the students in the back row come to know, through the indirect manner Oakeshott describes, that the professor is concerned that they learn. If a finger can be placed on the "human touch" of teaching, the role of attentiveness in motivating the student could well be it. As we now consider the pedagogy of online instruction, this is a key element that must be kept in the translation, at least for the great many students who need motivation from the instructor. Not only must professors provide teaching over the Internet; they must also be in contact with students to assess learning. Online PedagogyAt first glance, teaching a class without the ability
to see and hear the students in person appears daunting. The enlightened,
quizzical, or stony facial expressions, the sighs of distress or gasps
of wonder, and even the less-than-subtle raised hands or interjected queries
that constitute immediate feedback to a lecture, discussion, or clinical
situation are absent. Yet the proponents of online instruction will argue
that these obstacles can be overcome, and that the online format has its
own advantages. In the online experiences documented in the "Net.Learning"
(www.pbs.org/netlearning/home.html)
videotape, which our seminar viewed early in the year, Peggy Lant of the
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo presented a striking
example that occurred in her class' online discussion of civil war. One
student's comments were especially gripping as she had just survived a
civil war in her home country. Shy students who have trouble participating
in a classroom discussion are said to feel more comfortable in an online
setting. The ability to sit and think as one composes a question or comment
also can raise the quality of the discussion. Susan Montgomery at the University
of Michigan has developed an interactive website that addresses diverse
learning styles through the use of multimedia (Montgomery, 1998).
Harasim and Feenberg argue enthusiastically that in
the hands of professors who know what they are doing, online instruction
is superior to face-to-face instruction. Says Feenberg of outright faculty
rejection of online teaching (Feenberg 1998):
...this unqualified rejection of online education contradicts our experience at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. There the virtual classroom was a place of intense intellectual and human interaction. Literally hundreds of highly intelligent comments were contributed to our computer conferences each month by both students and teachers. The quality of these online discussions surpasses anything I have been able to stimulate in my face-to-face classroom.During her visit with us, Harasim described the change from traditional classroom lectures to online CMC instruction as "a change from a model of efficiency to a model of quality." In Learning Networks (Harasim et al., 1995), she states Teachers, trainers, and professors with years of experience in classrooms report that computer networking encourages the high-quality interaction and sharing that is at the heart of education. ...(The) characteristics of online classes... generally result in students' contributing material that is much better than something they would say off the top of their heads in a face-to-face class. There is a converse side, however. Just after the passage
above, Harasim cautions (Harasim et al. 1995)
On the other hand, unless the teacher facilitates the networking activities skillfully, serious problems may develop. A conference may turn into a monologue of lecture-type material to which very few responses are made. It may become a disorganized mountain of information that is confusing and overwhelming for the participants. It may even break down socially into name calling rather than building a sense of community.There are two related parts to this caution. First, the teaching paradigm must change for online instruction, away from the traditional lecture format. Second, the instructor has an important role in moderating the interaction. Feenberg emphasized that the different paradigm of CMC is due to the fact that CMC is a text-based medium. In "Promise or Threat" (Feenberg 1998) he explains: Just as a concert hall is a space appropriate for different activities than a living room, so the electronically mediated spaces of computer networks are also suited to specific activities. It would of course be possible to conduct a class in a restaurant, or dine on a basketball court, but the results would likely be disappointing. Similar abuse of the online environment will also yield disappointing outcomes. But this is precisely what happens when we try to reproduce a face-to-face classroom online or on CD ROM. ...On the other hand, we have a well established method for communicating in a narrow bandwidth. It's called writing... Writing is thus not a poor substitute for physical presence and speech, but another fundamental medium of expression with its own properties and powers... These considerations on writing hold the key to online education. The online environment is essentially a space for written interaction. This is its limitation and potential. Electronic networks should be appropriated with this in mind, and not turned into poor copies of the face-to-face classroom that they can never adequately reproduce.(From this standpoint, he argues that the latest, most expensive high-tech equipment for videoconferencing or automated learning frequently hyped by vendors to eager administrators is not the best for the task.) While the Learning Networks text (Harasim et al., 1995) presents a host of media options for online content delivery, including video and audio conferencing, CD ROM and videotapes, the CMC mode appears to occupy the central place in this group's thinking, and certainly did in Harasim's presentation to us. It was Feenberg and his colleagues who first worked out the role of the instructor for the novel paradigm of CMC. He played a central part in the pioneering efforts at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in one of the earliest educational experiments (1982) in international networking (Feenberg, 1993). The role of teacher as online "moderator" can be summarized in three parts, contextualizing functions, monitoring functions, and meta-functions (Feenberg 1989). The role of the first two functions is to compensate for the absence of physical cues found in a traditional classroom. Students must be explicitly told, for example, that the conference in which they are about to proceed is a "class" or a "meeting" or a support group. After a topic is introduced, students' comments must be monitored to assure that all are participating and that they understand the meeting mode. If CMC has both limitations and potential, these first two functions compensate for the limitations of this medium, while the third, meta functions, give rise to its potential. Meta-communication, or communication about communication, has two parts. First, it is needed to resolve problems in communication that would be addressed in the classroom by body language or a request to speak up on the part of the students. Second, comments are needed which summarize the state of a discussion and provide a sense of accomplishment and direction. These are called "weaving" comments, and it is particularly with these that the class gets more deeply into themes than students in a face-to-face classroom. These three functions are summarized in Table 6, which is adapted from Feenberg (1989). These functions are alluded to with approximately the same terms in the book of Harasim et al. (1995). Table 6. Moderating Functions of Computer Mediated Communication
In his visit with us, Curtis Bonk called to our attention the theory supporting the text-based, collaborative learning paradigm of CMC. That theory is constructivism, which evolved earlier than and independently of CMC, but which has extensive applications in the use of computer supported collaborative learning tools. While there is no canonical form of constructivism (Bonk and Cunningham, 1998), the theory involves the belief that better learning occurs when knowledge is the result of a situated construction of knowledge. Bonk and Cunningham (1998) cite Cobb's (1994) two variations: "cognitive constructivists tend to draw insight from Piaget and focus on individual constructions of knowledge discovered in interaction with the environment, [and] social constructivists rely more on Vygotsky... and view learning as connection with and appropriation from the sociocultural context..." Bonk favors the latter position, perhaps because this position best fits the social, collaborative milieu of the online courses he teaches in education. The assumptions of this form are that "the mind is located in the social interaction setting... (knowledge is built) not just on individual student prior knowledge, but on common interests and experiences... (and there is) team as well as individual reflection and group processing on experiences" (Bonk and Cunningham, 1998). Likewise, the CMC forms utilized by Prof. Feenberg for courses in management and strategic studies and Harasim's for communication also appear to match the social model. Feenberg and Harasim appear to have developed their methods less from constructivist theory than by practice. Several points drawn out by Bonk suggest that online communication may enhance the goals and tactics of constructivist educational theory. One of the most significant is the development of flexible "scaffolding" for student work where the instructional design and teaching tactics surround, but do not fill in, the learning by students (Bonk et al., 1998). This is seen in his work on apprenticeship, for example, in some cases extending far beyond a normal classroom environment to draw far-flung experts into a discussion (Bonk and Reynolds, 1997). A second factor concerns the importance of a distributed, or even global audience for student work which, connected with the student's ability to adapt to alternative roles, may fundamentally alter a student's view of their work (Bonk, Appelman, and Hay, 1996). Finally, the archiving function of online technology may form the basis for new methods of student portfolio construction. Through all these points, he asserts that online environments offer interesting opportunities for learning to take place through social interactions where the individual's prior and emerging knowledge meet. But what of Uhl's online course using graphical mathematics software for calculus, and Shapley's online course using molecular visualizations? These courses are not text-based, but rather are graphically driven and are immediately interactive with computer software as opposed to other students. It is tempting to ascribe the social form of constructivism to classes that are normally taught in the seminar or discussion mode. Likewise, the cognitive form of constructivism, which places more emphasis on individual constructions of knowledge and experience via physical manipulation, can be ascribed to courses such as math and chemistry that would normally be taught in a didactic way. An example of a cognitive constructivist approach to traditional education is the new approach at the University of Maryland to teach physics not with lectures, but with hands-on experimental demonstrations (Redish and Steinberg, 1999). The material we have seen suggests that sound online pedagogy involve a shift in paradigm in one of at least two ways, which are of course not mutually exclusive. For discussion type courses the text-based, collaborative learning approach seems very suitable, while for didactic courses, the graphics-based, more individualized form of constructivism works well. And by no means are new paradigms limited to these two. Before we leave the issue of online paradigms, it must be noted that many educators do believe that the best approach to online teaching is to simulate the traditional face-to-face mode. At Georgia Tech, for example, the distance education program is being renovated in this fashion (Goettling, 1999): "What distinguishes Georgia Tech's [new] offering is its use of streaming video and audio, essentially to transmit an image of the professor delivering the lectures, something like movies on demand." More locally, a UIUC study conducted in the Department of Human Resource Education (Johnson et al., 1999) concludes that "Until the technologies for online instruction better simulate real time interaction, program developers need to avoid courses that require frequent socialization between students and the instructor." In his criticism of distance learning Prof. Farber also displays this thinking: "...let us note that teleconferencing, sadly inadequate as it is as a replacement for the classroom, is the very top of the line when it comes to distance learning" (1998). In a later section (6, Teaching Evaluation) we will explain why we disagree. What of online interactions and the human touch? One comment Harasim made to us brings this matter to the forefront. In comparing how well one gets to know their class by the respective modes she said "Online you get to know your students' minds, not just their faces." (Upon hearing this the tendency of a good classroom teacher is to argue that he or she has relationships with students that are a bit beyond skin-deep.) Taken with her other statement that "online teaching represents a shift from a model of efficiency to a model of quality," the point here is that an online course taught well creates a great deal of interaction between the professor and her or his students. There must also be a great deal of interaction between the students themselves, especially in wholly online courses for groups of place-bound students. Harasim, Linda Smith, Bonk, and Feenberg all state the need to form "a community of learners." Says Harasim (1995): The instructor must make a computer conference feel and function like a classroom, turning the computer screen into a window on the world [not by imitation but by a new paradigm], so that students exchanging asynchronous messages feel and behave as if they are working together with a group of peers. ...The instructor's challenge is to create appropriate conditions for a group learning environment... A sense of group and community among electronically assembled individuals can be created by a combination of facilitation skills [e.g. Feenberg's moderating functions], team-building activities, and conferences for specific groups and tasks.A recent paper has stated that student frustration is much more prevalent than is currently believed (Hara and Kling, 1999, Mendels, 1999b). Two levels of frustration were cited; the first related to technical problems, stemming from inadequate technical support and computer skills, and the second due to a lack of immediate feedback from the instructor and from ambiguous instructions. Smith, who has had over 2 years experience with teaching wholly online in the Library Education Experimental Program, contributed this comment to our webboard discussion on motivation, which underscores the need for student-professor interactions even with mature graduate students: ...I think I am in a good position to address these issues as they relate to graduate professional students who range in age from early 20's to late 50's. These students are already working in libraries or seek to prepare themselves to work in libraries or related settings, so they already have a high degree of self-motivation. In addition their program of study has only two required courses, so they are choosing courses in which they expect to have an interest. Nevertheless the instructor still has a responsibility to motivate interest in the material through the design of the course and assignments. Factors that contribute to peer motivation include starting them as a group in "boot camp" so they have a shared face-to-face experience at the beginning of the program. In addition many courses include group assignments where there is a shared responsibility for completing the work. Does this mean that the faculty member plays a minor motivational role for most students? Not in my experience, though the type and amount of motivation provided by the instructor varies with the student. Students still seek recognition of their work by the instructor - they want feedback on assignments, a certain number of live sessions in which they can interact "in real time" with the instructor, and expect the instructor to have a presence in the dialogs that unfold on the webboards. While students are generally interested in the content of the course, they can become overwhelmed with all the other responsibilities in their lives. It is important for them to be able to connect with an understanding instructor who can help them put things in perspective and sustain their commitment to continuing in the course and in the program when it is tempting to give up. I know that they also receive this type of support from peers and LEEP alumni... At what cost is this high degree of interaction, the
need for which we suspect is student motivation and the professor's (online)
attentiveness, achieved? In the previous section it was noted that charismatic
professors of large (several hundred student) classes might indeed reach
and motivate the students in the back row by intangible displays of attentiveness.
Online, attentiveness must be tangible, and may involve more effort than
in a face-to-face setting. These considerations imply an inherent limitation
of online class size; size is determined by the amount of effort required
to form a "community of learners."
The implication that successful online class sizes
are relatively small appears to be borne out in the online literature.
There are frequent references in Learning Networks to class sizes on the
order of twenty (Harasim et al., 1995). The mid-twenties was the limit
for Bonk's online classes at Indiana, and was preferred by UIUC's Smith
for the LEEP program, although she most recently taught 37. An article
entitled "How Many Students are 'Just Right' in a Web Course," appearing
in Syllabus Magazine (Boettcher, 1998), cites Murray Turoff, one of Learning
Networks' coauthors and another of the online pioneers, as noting that
"the workload of faculty is linearly dependent on the number of students."
The Syllabus article states that "experiential data is suggesting that
the maximum number of students for online courses is really very low -
in the range of 12 to 20 students, depending on the level of instruction.
Some experience seems to suggest that Web courses can support larger numbers
- in the range of 25-65 for courses that are focused more on training,
certification, or professional degrees." However, the student/faculty ratios
for the executive programs at the WBSI and for the University of Phoenix
to date, are even fewer at about 8:1 (Feenberg, 1989).
There are a few exceptions, and the most notable we
encountered is Shapley's mixed mode organic chemistry class at UIUC. We
were amazed to hear that the most recent enrollment in Chem 331 was 162!
This is especially astounding since Shapley made it a point to communicate
with each student at least once a week, and would specifically follow up
with those students who hadn't been in communication. Another of Shapley's
human touches, by the way, is to embed a photograph of the corresponding
student with each communication, so that she could associate words with
a face. During her videoconferenced presentation to us, the comment was
made to her that 3 or 5 minutes per student, times 162 students per week,
is a significant chunk of time. She replied, with a knowing pause easily
discernible even via the video monitor, "Yes, it's a significant chunk
of time." She then proceeded to describe a new format being developed that
would require less contact on the part of the professor, and more on the
part of teaching assistants.
Small class sizes and the linear dependence of effort
on student numbers are indicative of the high level of interaction needed
for high quality online teaching. And is it just the instructor's time,
or does their expertise in the subject area also come into play? Often
in the online literature one encounters the phrase that the role of the
instructor changes from being " sage on the stage" in traditional settings
to "a guide by the side" online (Harasim et al, 1995). According to constructivism,
students "create knowledge for themselves," and the instructor's role is
to facilitate this process. Such descriptions lend themselves to the notion
that the instructor can be nothing more than something like a non-expert
but motivational cheerleader.
Harasim was actually reluctant to use the "guide by the side" description, and instead showed us a manuscript in preparation in which she and her co-author emphasize the need for "master teachers" (Campos and Harasim, 1999). Professor Feenberg summarizes the need for expert professors in the "Promise or Threat" article (1998) by concluding: The best way to maintain the connection [between online education and the values of traditional education] is through ensuring that distance learning is 'delivered' not just by CD ROMs, but by living teachers, fully qualified and interested in doing so online ... The need for "master educators" and small class sizes
for high-quality online teaching implies high cost. Etchemendy's presentation
contained a very interesting introductory slide, in which initially three
questions were presented, to the effect 1) "Can online delivery improve
the quality of teaching?" 2) "Can online delivery improve the access to
teaching?" and 3) "Can online delivery decrease the cost of teaching?"
The answer to each question asked individually was "yes." However, when
each individual question was considered in relation to the other two factors,
the answers became different. "Can online delivery improve the quality
of teaching?" "Yes, but not without increasing the cost." "Can online teaching
increase access at the same cost?" "Yes, but not without a degradation
of quality," and so forth.
To university administrators, we appear to have a good-news/bad-news
scenario to present. The good news is that high quality online instruction
can occur, if new paradigms are employed which compensate for limited bandwidth,
and if professors take the time and effort to maintain the human touch
of attentiveness needed in many cases by their students. The bad news is
that the limit of college level online class size is inherently below that
of the traditional classroom. Any transition of "efficiency to quality"
comes with a high quality price tag.
A number of factors would seem to call for the evaluation
of online learning effectiveness in comparison to traditional classes and
programs. One is certainly economic: the high cost for the technology and
staff to support it. How justified are these expenses? A second is pedagogic:
implementers of novel teaching methods, and their administrators for that
matter, are in need of feedback so that the quality of teaching can be
maximized. Harasim and her co-authors refer to these two directions in
the Learning Networks text (1995):
The introduction of new educational technologies, including computer networking, benefits from educational evaluation and assessment. Assessment includes both top-down accountability approaches (reporting of results for accountability purposes) and bottom-up instructional improvement (helping individual students gain most from instruction). Both perspectives share a common goal of improving education and are important at all stages of adopting technological innovations.However, the evaluation of online learning is not straightforward. In this section we present a picture of what has been done or attempted, what has been suggested, and what we feel an evaluation of online learning should include. A Survey of Online Evaluation LiteratureThe online evaluations we encountered over the course
of the year were mainly anecdotal. A good number of such examples are found
in chapters 1 and 3 of Harasim's text (1995). In her presentation to us
she related a particular experience with a sophomore level class in communication
that she taught in mixed mode. Midway through the semester, she informed
the class that the online component would be removed, but the class would
not permit it. This class was obviously satisfied with the online component.
Shapley's message concerning evaluation was that by using a self-paced,
asynchronous online approach with plenty of opportunity for the review
of difficult material, retention of remedial students was much higher than
in a traditional classroom. Additionally, overall online class performance
on a graduate level chemistry entrance exam was much higher than the traditional
class.
Turning to the literature, two of the most recent,
comprehensive reviews of online teaching effectiveness are Russell's "No
Significant Difference Phenomenon" compendium (1999), and the AFT - and
NEA - commissioned review of distance learning research in higher education
by Phipps and Merisotis (1999).
The former work, posted as the "No Significant Differences"
Web site (Russel, 1999) and also to be published as a book, is a listing
of well over 300 studies dating from 1928 that have found no significant
difference in the effectiveness of distance versus traditional learning.
(A revised version is to contain studies that do cite a difference, but
at the time of this report's writing that section had not been added.)
In these works "distance learning" is used in its most general form; included
are studies of mail, radio, one-way television, audio and videotape and
even telephone delivery. About one-third of the material pertains to recent
developments in CMC. Unfortunately, the manner in which outcomes were assessed
is not given in detail if at all, in the brief descriptions of each study.
Nevertheless the information in this compendium raises
questions when digested slowly. Each study concluded that the performance
of students at a distance was not significantly different than that of
traditional students. This applies not just to CMC, but to transmission
by, say, radio or television. Commenting on this report in his "Third Circle"
article (Farber, 1998), Farber states "if one wanted to lower the boom
on the new distance learning technologies as a cost-effective means of
delivering
measurable competence, it would be hard to find a better argument for
doing it than this list..." That is, why pay for computers and tech support
when radio broadcasts or mail correspondence will do?
We might make of this an historical observation. Claims have been made in every age that distance learning is as effective as the classroom. Indeed, the theme of Noble's seminar to us ("The History of Correspondence Schools") was how hauntingly familiar the promises of cost efficiency and learning efficacy made for mail correspondence courses in the first half of this century are to current claims for distance learning. We might also comment that there will always be some students who are sufficiently mature and motivated that they can learn by almost any distance mode. We'd love to see a compendium of detailed assessments reporting a difference. The report of Phipps and Merisotis (1999) titled "What's the Difference? A Review of Contemporary Research on the Effectiveness of Distance Learning in Higher Education" cites Russell's work frequently but focuses much more on computer based learning studies published in the 1990s. The purpose of their analysis is "to examine the research on distance learning more closely so that public policy may be better informed." Their report confirms what we heard from all of our external speakers, that "there is a relative paucity of true, original research dedicated to explaining or predicting phenomena related to distance learning." They suggest that "the overall quality of the original research is questionable and thereby renders many of the findings inconclusive," and go on to list the key shortcomings and gaps in the research. Listed shortcomings include non-random subject selection, questionable validity of the instruments used to measure student outcomes, and lack of controls for "reactive effects" of students and faculty such as increased motivation and interest stemming from a project's novelty. Gaps in the research are cited to include emphasis on outcomes for individual courses and technologies rather than whole programs and multiple technologies, no account for differences in students and learning styles, no explanation for higher drop-out rates of distance learners, and no inclusion of a theoretical or conceptual framework. Three implications are drawn from the findings: 1) the issue of nondiscriminatory access remains unclear, 2) technology cannot replace the human factor in higher education, and 3) the technology employed is secondary to pedagogical factors such as learning tasks, student motivation, and the instructor. Phipps and Merisotis' criticisms of online education research have themselves been sharply criticized. In an article by Brown and Mack (1999), their evaluation is described as convoluted, naive, and contradictory, and their expectations of the research as unrealistic: Their convoluted expectations illustrate precisely why comprehensive, clear evidence is rarely attainable in the complex, messy world of teaching and learning, even after decades of educational research. Quite simply, Phipps and Merisotis call for a fantasy research paradigm in their critique. They want 'randomized experiments' embedded in 'theoretical construct to test multiple variables' in which 'extraneous variables are controlled' to produce results that do not yield population data, but rather are 'predictive of outcomes for individual learners.' This would be roughly equivalent to a randomized, double blind study of the effects of multiple drugs interacting with each other and with caregivers' styles, resulting in predictions of how various drug combinations work with different individuals in order to make a uniform policy for a universal health care program.At issue here is the extent to which it is even possible to evaluate the effectiveness of online teaching and learning. In a First Monday article, which rebuts Noble's Digital Diploma Mills series, Frank White (1999) argues that the question of pedagogical effectiveness of information technology is the wrong question. He cites both Steven Ehrman, who observes (1997) "The first group of useless questions seeks universal answers to questions about the comparative teaching effectiveness and costs of technology... That question assumes that education operates something like a machine..."and Ronald Owston, who points out (Owston, 1997) "...we cannot simply ask 'Do students learn better with the Web as compared to traditional classroom instruction?' We have to realize that no medium, in and of itself, will likely improve learning in a significant way when it is used to deliver instruction. Nor is it realistic to expect the Web, when used as a tool, to develop in students any unique skills."White, again citing Owston, suggests that the right question is "What distinct advantages does an instructional technology offer that instructors can exploit to promote improved learning?" White seems to be saying that instructional technology should be implemented based on its pedagogical potential, which is well and fine. However, the earlier evaluation philosophies only seek to confirm a technology's pedagogical potential. We disagree that comparisons of learning effectiveness can't or shouldn't be done, with at least some of the rigor called for by Phipps and Merisotis. On the other hand, we do agree that the evaluation of online learning is multifaceted and subtle, and learning competence is only part of the evaluation need. Our external speaker with the most perspective in this area was Harasim. The "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches given by Harasim et al. (1995) have also been termed "summative" and "formative" evaluation. Regarding the former type, the text states, "Summative evaluation is generally conducted for the benefit of outsiders, perhaps funding agencies that want to know if their investment paid off or the research community, which wants to know what generalizable conclusions result from a project. Cost benefit analysis is one possible component of summative evaluation." In her presentation to us, she mentioned that rigorous evaluation of learning effectiveness is sorrowfully lacking, but that it could and should be performed. She mentioned random selection of students, and thorough pre and post testing of comparison groups among the requirements for a rigorous evaluation. A good example of such an evaluation program is found at Stanford University's Distance Education Web site, in a funded grant proposal that is posted online (Harris, DiPaolo, and Goodman, 1994). The grant authors designed a comparison between three control groups of graduate level engineering students, one taught in the traditional classroom, one taught at a distance by videotape, and one taught at a distance online. Unfortunately, the company that was to have performed the evaluation botched the job (DiPaolo, 1999). The proposal also included cost-benefit calculations as part of their evaluation. Evaluation gets fuzzier for more open-ended, CMC based courses. In these settings the argument of Ehrman (1997) is that "different students learn different things and their learning cannot be tested on discreet skill tests and quantified." Another difficulty in evaluation arises when the computer-based technology represents a unique learning paradigm, as in Etchemendy's logic and computability programs. In this case, there may be no immediately tangible basis on which to compare the unique learning experience imparted by the computer tool. A Suggested Evaluation ProgramThe new paradigms of online instruction call for new
paradigms of evaluation. Harasim (Harasim et al, 1995) suggests that formative
feedback as well as summative evaluations should consider a multiplicity
of evidence beyond written exercises and tests, for example "participation
by students in class discussions, project work, and individual and group
interviews." The entire second section of Learning Networks (entitled The
Guide), cited extensively throughout this report, is devoted to teaching
and learning guidelines, with chapters on Designs for Learning Networks,
Getting Started, Teaching Online, Learning Online, and Problems to Expect.
Perhaps the best way to summarize the guidelines put forth in this text,
which hint at the focal points for evaluation, is to cite the checklists
for action at the end of the Teaching Online and Learning Online chapters.
Both of these lists were formulated mainly in reference to CMC. This checklist,
written for the instructor, comes from Chapter 6 of Teaching Online (Harasim
et al., 1995):
Facilitating Online Courses: A Checklist for Action The key concept in network teaching is to facilitate collaborative learning, not to deliver a course in a fixed and rigid, one-way format.The checklist in chapter 7 (Learning Online) is written for the student: Checklist for Action The American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC 1999)
has set forth a more concise set of guiding principles for distance teaching
and learning, which again can be viewed in light of determining key elements
for evaluation. One assumption of the ADEC principles has already been
cited in section 4 on "Good Teaching" ("The principles that lend themselves
to quality face-to-face learning environments are often similar to those
found in web-based learning environments"). Another is that distance learning
media is converging to a digital platform. Their distance learning guidelines
therefore apply wholly to online learning:
While the "tight focus" of the first point above sounds a bit more like "training" than "education," this set of broad guidelines, and the former set more focused on CMC, appear in general to be well grounded in experience and reasonable. For our part, we wish to propose a general program of evaluation derived from the above sets of guiding principles, emphasizing the pedagogical issues that recurred most frequently in our discussions. These are the questions we feel should be asked; one of which can be answered by quantitative evaluation, and the other 5 by qualitative assessment of course materials, student surveys or the archived text of students' coursework:
The ability to archive peer discussions and student-faculty
interactions offers a unique and rich source of data for evaluation. As
Harasim points out, the medium permits faculty to reflect back upon the
educational growth of their students. Similarly, archived material can
be "mined" to assess the critical elements identified above.
To conclude this section, we will illustrate the application
of our suggested evaluation survey for the online "contexts" given in Table
5. First, we consider adjunct applications for any of the training, education,
or graduate education contexts. Suppose a professor has gone beyond posting
a syllabus and homework assignments on the Internet, and has developed
online exercises by utilizing available software. For example, students
could be asked to perform a series of calculations related to a physics
or an engineering lecture with the use of a spreadsheet or math package,
or students in a history course might be asked to perform a literature
search through the web. There is innovation in that modern computer tools
are being utilized. Interactivity issues are of lesser concern here, since
the students still meet in class on a frequent basis. Similarly, the maturity
issues are of lesser importance in these contexts. The scope of the calculations
and the comprehensiveness of the literature search would serve to indicate
the student's breadth of understanding. This appears to be a favorable
situation, and we would expect learning competence to be improved relative
to students in the same circumstances but without the computer work.
Even more innovative are adjunct modes in which the
professor has invented a new learning paradigm with the computer. Etchemendy's
Turing's World and Tarski's World are prime examples of leading-edge innovation.
During our discussions, Etchemendy opined that such novel teaching paradigms
could be developed in most any field, if one sat down and really thought
about it.
The mixed mode class of Shapley, featuring interactive
graphics, self-paced learning with ample opportunity for review, and weekly
gatherings to tie up loose ends, would also be evaluated highly in innovation
and student engagement. The one caution in this case, on the issue of interaction
and "connectedness," would be due to the very large class size. This appears
to be addressed by the extraordinary efforts expended by Prof. Shapley
to contact each student on at least a weekly basis. The classroom meetings
also serve to foster interactions. The high retention rates and higher
test achievement of this mode are also evidence of the success of this
course. We would impart similarly high evaluations to and expect similar
results from Uhl's calculus classes, as well as Harasim's mixed mode communication
classes. Mixed mode classes can be comprised of the best of both worlds;
the human interactions of the classroom with the powerful learning tools
of the computer.
The direction of some undergraduate online proposals away from low student to faculty ratios is disturbing. Recently, for example, the Pew Learning and Technology Program has been created in conjunction with the Center for Academic Transformation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (www.center.rpi.edu). The main portion of the $8.8 million, four-year effort is allotted to the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign, which specifically targets the online redesign of "large-enrollment, introductory courses, which have the potential of impacting significant numbers of students and generating substantial cost savings." The presence of "significant numbers of students" and "cost savings" in the same sentence raises concerns with "interactions." Applying Etchymendian logic here, increased access at decreased cost amounts to lower quality. The mode of delivery and degree of professor-student and student-student interactions, on which depend the student's engagement in the material, are especially crucial in wholly online courses. Among the more successful wholly online programs appear to be graduate level business degrees, many of which are also highly profitable. We would venture to guess that the most successful programs such as those at the U. of Phoenix feature leading edge CMC and collaborative learning exercises (high on the innovation scale), and small class sizes and student to faculty ratios (high on the interaction scale). The high tuition these students pay would also seem to indicate that technical support is correspondingly high. The academic maturity of these students, who would already have experienced an undergraduate education, mitigates the need for emphasis on socialization. Ideal online graduate students already possess a mature outlook and will employ it readily in their work. Similarly, for a professional workshop in which the participants may be extremely mature (for example, a class of Ph.D. engineers taking a short course in industrial catalysis), the need for interaction might be relaxed. The term "professional training" fits this case well and connotes that the object of the communication is primarily to impart information. For most work at the masters level, though, the key aspects of wholly online contexts for the "nontraditional" student would appear to be the mode of delivery and the degree of interaction. A number of graduate distance education programs appear to be entering the online arena using delivery modes that strive to simulate the traditional classroom. For example, a description of Georgia Tech's online masters engineering programs (Goettling, 1999) reads "What distinguishes Georgia Tech's offering is its use of streaming video and audio, essentially to transmit an image of the professor delivering the lectures, something like movies on demand. The lecture notes being used by the instructor also appear on the screen." This format will undoubtedly be more convenient (although if a computer must be purchased, more expensive) than videotape or satellite transmission. We suggest, however, that the maintenance of the lecture format doesn't exploit the full potential of online learning, which involves a paradigm shift away from the lecture format. In addition, online courses in which professors are insulated from students by teaching assistants, in attempts to make the course offering less onerous for the professor, are also less desirable. We might say that a lecture-style, low-interaction online format represents only an incremental improvement of "distance" courses, and keeps them in the category of individualistic "correspondence courses." On the other hand, more innovative, interactive offerings might cross the threshold in becoming truly "online" courses in which "communities of learners" are established. Perhaps the most risky wholly online context is the offering of whole degrees in undergraduate education. While this mode might be justified for some place-bound students, online interconnectivity, as good as it can be, still cannot replace the human interactions of in-class, in-the-hallways, and in-the-pub situations. Harasim admitted as much in her seminar to us, stating that "online programs are not in competition with traditional education" for precisely this reason. It is interesting to note that at UIC's School of Public Health as well as at some other schools, courses designed for "distance" students are actually subscribed to by a majority of on-campus students. This is not necessarily a bad thing: wholly online course taken by on-campus students might be part of the "best of both worlds" scenario mentioned earlier. In sum, of the seven contexts of online education presented in Table 5, high quality online courses and programs might be developed, with due attention to the paradigm of content delivery and to the establishment of professor-student and student-student interactions, in all contexts except that of whole undergraduate degrees offered online. In this case the needed process of socialization occurs apart from, and indeed is a complement to, the content-delivery experience. We have yet to see how this might be accomplished online. Young, traditional students in these programs might be well served, however, with online courseware on campus. A final consideration here pertains to the degree to which traditional teaching should be replaced by online teaching. As mentioned earlier, Prof. Etchemendy suggested that novel online tools could be developed very widely. We do believe that teaching innovation should be expected of faculty and weighted and rewarded to perhaps a greater degree than presently occurs at many research-oriented universities. There is no way of knowing or predicting, however, to what extent traditional teaching can be replaced by online material. That is, lectures have their place. While this document pertains principally to high quality online instruction, we must also insist on high quality face-to-face instruction by lecture, discussion, or clinical setting. Online courses are not the solution to poor classroom teaching; policies that encourage and reward good classroom teaching are. Three ancillary issues affect online pedagogy to such
an extent that we wish to include them in this report: course ownership,
the conflict of interest between business and scholarship, and academic
deprofessionalization. In this section, we will discuss how these related
issues impact the quality of online offerings.
Earlier, we argued that in-depth involvement of an
expert professor is needed in order to ensure high quality of online teaching.
The issue of course ownership is directly related to this principle: the
highest quality of online materials is usually assured when faculty members
are in control of the material. There may be legitimate circumstances under
which the quality of academic work and the shared maintenance of creative
vitality is best assured when the University has some share in copyright.
We now examine the conditions under which faculty retain the copyrights
of material they have developed, and when the University claims such rights.
At the University of Illinois two documents relate
directly to courseware ownership and copyright policy; these are Article
III of The General Rules Concerning University Organization and Procedure
(Board of Trustees, 1998), and The Intellectual Property Subcommittee's
Report on Courseware Development and Distribution (VPAA 1998) that is based
on the third article of The General Rules. The latter document's executive
summary states that "The Intellectual Property Policy in The General Rules
(Article III) is sufficient to cover the ownership, license rights and
income distribution policies that are applicable to the development and
distribution of web tools and course materials." Its purpose is to apply
the General Rules concerning ownership to the specific issue of online
courseware development.
In the General Rules, Traditional Academic Copyrightable
Works are defined in Section 2, statement (b) of Article III:
(b) Traditional Academic Copyrightable Works. "Traditional academic copyrightable works" are a subset of copyrightable works created independently and at the creator's initiative for traditional academic purposes. Examples include class notes, books, theses and dissertations, educational software (also known as courseware or lessonware), articles, non-fiction, fiction, poems, musical works, dramatic works including any accompanying music, pantomimes and choreographic works, pictorial, graphic and sculptural works, or other works or artistic imagination that are not created as an institutional initiative (as specified in Section 4(a)(2) below).The section of Article III which pertains to ownership is the 4th, (Copyrights) and is reproduced below: SECTION 4. COPYRIGHTS (a) Ownership. Unless subject to any of the exceptions specified below or in Section 4(c), creators retain all rights to traditional academic copyrightable works as defined in Section 2(b) above. (See, however, Sections 4(b)(2) below.) The University shall own copyrightable works as follows: (1) Works created pursuant to the terms of a university agreement with an external party, or (2) Works created as a specific requirement of employment or as an assigned university duty that may be specified, for example, in a written job description or an employment agreement. Such specification may define the full scope or content of the employee's university employment duties comprehensively or may be limited to terms applicable to a single copyrightable work. Absent such prior written specification, ownership will vest with the University in those cases where the University provides the motivation for the preparation of the work, the topic or content of which is determined by the creator's employment duties and/or when the work is prepared at the university's expense. (see end note 2) (3) Works specifically commissioned by the University. The term "commissioned work" is hereafter used to describe a copyrightable work prepared under a written agreement between the University and the creator when (1) the creator is not a university employee or (2) the creator is a university employee but the work to be performed falls outside the normal scope of the creator's university employment. Contracts covering commissioned works shall specify that the author convey by assignment, if necessary, such rights as are required by the University. (4) Works that are also patentable. The University reserves the right to pursue multiple forms of legal protection concomitantly if available. Computer software, for example, can be protected by copyright, patent, trade secret and trademark. (b) University Rights in Creator-Owned Works (1) Traditional academic copyrightable works created using university resources usually and customarily provided are owned by the creators. Such works need not be licensed to the University. (2) Traditional academic copyrightable works created with use of university resources over and above those usually and customarily provided shall be owned by the creators but licensed to the University. The minimum terms of such license shall grant the University the right to use the original work in its internally administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis. The University may retain more than the minimum license rights when justified by the circumstances of development. (c) Student Works. Unless subject to the provisions of paragraph (a) or provided otherwise by written agreement, copyrightable works prepared by students as part of the requirements for a university degree program are deemed to be the property of the student but are subject to the following provisions: (1) The original records (including software) of an investigation for a graduate thesis or dissertation are the property of the University but may be retained by the student at the discretion of the student's major department. (2) The University shall have, as a condition of the degree award, the royalty-free right to retain, use and distribute a limited number of copies of the thesis, together with the right to require its publication for archival use.In the Intellectual Property (IP) Subcommittee's Report on Courseware Development, the section cited above is reiterated. Additionally, a second type of rights, "moral rights" is covered. The report states: In addition to copyright, creators expressed concern that they be able to maintain "quality control" of the content, presentation and use of courseware that they develop, particularly for derivative works. Such concerns generally fall under the "doctrine of moral right," which is covered by several federal and state doctrines that protect authors against reputational affronts arising from the use of their works. Thus for whatever policies are put in place by the University and the Units regarding course materials, it is important in general to respect the wishes of the original creators in the University's use of their work (particularly when the University has no ownership in the work). The "moral rights" issues are also very important when considering the University's right to make derivative works without the original author's participation. According to the General Rules, the conditions for
ownership of online courseware appear to be analogous to the conditions
for ownership of, say, materials for a textbook. The first point of Section
4 (b) states that copyright is retained by the "creator" when the work
is developed "using university resources usually and customarily provided."
Thus if a professor develops online material during her normal workday,
in addition to her usual teaching, research and service duties, then ownership
is hers. Section 4 (b) (2) covers the case where university resources are
utilized over and above those usually and customarily provided. Examples
might include release time, courseload reductions, or technical or secretarial
help. In this situation the material is still owned by the creator, but
the University retains the "right to use the original work in its internally
administered programs of teaching, research, and public service on a perpetual,
royalty-free, non-exclusive basis."
Likewise in paragraph 4 (c), the copyright of the work
of students is retained by the student, but the University has "the royalty-free
right to retain, use and distribute" the thesis or dissertation.
Part (a) of Section 4 indicates those circumstances
when the University claims outright ownership of faculty-developed online
material: (1) when the development of the material has been funded by an
external agency, (2) when development of the material is a specific requirement
of employment, (3) when the work is commissioned by the University from
someone not a university employee, or the work is outside of the normal
scope of a creator's employment, or (4) when the work is patentable.
The first three of these statements have potentially
significant effects on the quality of online teaching. The first has to
do with external funding. A consistent theme of the year was the increased
workload necessary to change from a traditional to an online course format.
Professor Harasim stated to us that the work was far from over after the
initial offering of an online course. The second iteration requires just
as much time and effort in making improvements, as the first offering required
in changing format. It is not until the third iteration that the preparation
effort begins to diminish. By its nature, developing an online course involves
effort over and above the effort needed for a traditional class. Faced
with such an onus, it is natural for faculty members to try to seek external
funding which might include, for example, summer funding to allow for a
focused period of learning and preparation. But here the faculty member
could be caught between a rock and a hard disk - without support, courseware
development may be next to impossible, but the support that makes the development
of courseware possible may prohibit course ownership. Thus enjoined forfeiture
of course materials that are funded externally might be seen as a disincentive
both to developing online courseware and to seeking external funding. This
was cited to be the case in a Chronicle of Higher Education story about
Drexel, where very broad ownership claims were initially made by the administration
(Young 1999). Courseware ownership policy is currently being rewritten
there.
At the University of Illinois, the situation may not be so contentious. The usual practice here is to agree to joint ownership, with clearly defined responsibilities for the faculty member and for the University. By the second and third conditions above, the University claims ownership when the courseware is "created as a specific requirement for employment" or is considered "work for hire" either by a current faculty member or an outsider, and this has traditionally been outside the norm of faculty duties. The IP's report clearly points out that "The University's position has been that faculty are hired to do teaching, research and public service - and creating copyrighted works as "work for hire" for the University is not a specific employment obligation for faculty." It would appear that a shift in this tradition is being attempted in some instances as universities contract with for-profit organizations using the "work for hire" provision as the lever to claim university ownership of developed courseware. David Noble addresses this shift of tradition in the second of his "Digital Diploma Mills" articles (Noble 1998b). He maintains that "University control over copyright is the sine qua non of the Digital Diploma Mills." He cites cases involving UCLA Extension (UNext, the largest continuing higher education program in the country) and The Home Education Network (THEN, now Onlinelearning.net), UC Berkeley and America On Line, and the University of Colorado and Real Education (now ecollege.com), all of which hinge on university control of courseware rights. As part of the planned UNext-THEN contract, "UNext formally agreed that it would undertake to compel its instructors, on THEN's behalf, to assign their copyrights to UNext" (Noble 1998b). Furthermore, the instructor must "forever waive any right to assert any rule, law, decree, judicial decision or administrative order of any kind throughout the world, which allows Instructor any right in the moral rights (droit moral) in the Recordings." Thus, even the "moral rights" of courseware developers would be denied. In Professor Noble's third article (1998c), an example is presented in which the lines between extraordinary and normal duties and support from the university again appear to be blurred entirely. At Florida Gulf Coast University, a draft policy on intellectual property, formulated without faculty involvement, is cited to read as follows: "IP developed by FGCU employees (faculty, staff, and students) under university sponsorship or with university support shall belong to the university. University sponsorship or support means the work is conceived or reduced to practice: as a result of the employee's duties; through the use of University resources, such as facilities or equipment; or with university funds, or funds under the control of or administered by the university." The faculty at FGCU as at many other institutions have opposed what they perceive to be an overreaching ownership policy. As mentioned in the beginning of this report, Professor Noble has called the current trend of university-commercial ties through teaching technology "the commoditization of higher education." In Digital Diploma Mills I he states (Noble 1998a): With the commoditization of instruction, teachers as labor are drawn into a production process designed for the efficient creation of instructional commodities, and hence become subject to all the pressures that have befallen production workers in other industries undergoing rapid technological transformation from above. Like these others, their activity is being restructured, via the technology, in order to reduce their autonomy, independence, and control over their work and to place knowledge and control as much as possible into the hands of the administration.Apart from issues of higher education management, the passage above underscores the gravest danger to sound pedagogy. If commercial interests prevail in the distribution of educational material, the focus might cease to be "How are students best able to learn?" and might be instead "How are students, through learning, best able to maximize the profits of education providers?" This risk is especially critical when faculty members or whole departments have a financial interest in the educational media company, as reportedly is the case in the liaison between UNext and the University of Chicago and UNext and Columbia (McGeehan, 1999, Blumenstyk, 1999). The situation is even more acute at the University of Chicago, where UNext's head is a U. of Chicago trustee. A final related part of ownership risks to sound pedagogy is the issue of "deprofessionalization." In a worst-case scenario of education commoditization, the replacement of full-time by part-time faculty is just one step in the eventual progression of the deskilling and then the elimination of faculty. Noble cites the case of the New School in New York, which "now routinely hires outside contractors from around the country, mostly unemployed PhDs, to design online courses. The designers are required to surrender to the university all rights to their course. The New School then offers the course without having to employ anyone." In the same article he quotes Educom President Robert Heterich as follows: "Today you're looking at a highly personal human-mediated environment... The potential to remove the human mediation in some areas and replace it with automation - smart, computer-based, network-based systems - is tremendous. It's gotta happen." While the elimination of all but perhaps "superstar" faculty members seems farfetched, Feenberg provided us some surprising statistics. According to his Promise of Threat article (Feenberg 1999), "Between 1970 and 1995, the number of full-time faculty increased by about half, while over the same period part-time faculty grew by two and one half times... At community colleges, they are already in the majority." In southern California, relates Feenberg, part-time instructors who must commute hastily between several campuses have become so prevalent that as a group they have acquired a nickname: "freeway flyers." The deprofessionalism of faculty appears to be a reality, as part of the business-oriented transformation of higher education, and it would also appear that teaching technology could be used to abet this transformation. We conclude with a summary of tentative recommendations,
which are the called-for "practical considerations" arising from our fundamental
considerations of pedagogy. We have formulated two sets of guidelines,
one for faculty members interested in developing online coursework, and
one for administrators interested in formulating policy.
Practical Considerations for Faculty:
The fraction of "nontraditional" students is not as
high as some make it out to be, but is still significant. Stemming from
the baby boomlet, the number of young, "traditional" students will be as
high as or higher than ever through the next decade. Many contexts of online
course delivery given in Table 5, for professional training/continuing
education, undergraduate education, and graduate education for both traditional
and nontraditional students, are viable. There are several exceptions:
first, certain types of advanced graduate work cannot be performed online,
and second, traditional students benefit from the maturing, socializing
component of an undergraduate college education and this requires an on-campus
presence.
Attempts are being made to use instructional technology
such as real-time two-way videoconferencing in order to simulate the traditional
classroom. With improvements in technology this mode may yet succeed, but
from what we have seen, the leaders in this area recommend shifts from
"traditional" teaching paradigms. Two new online paradigms that appear
to work well are text-based computer mediated communication (CMC) for courses
that are traditionally taught in the discussion or seminar mode, and interactive,
graphically based material for courses that are traditionally taught in
the lecture mode. Methods are by no means limited to these two.
High quality teaching online requires smaller student/faculty
ratios. The shift from the classroom to online has been described as a
shift from "efficiency to quality." We also believe a motivational human
touch must come into play as well in the online environment as it does
in the classroom. Students should feel they are members of a learning community
and derive motivation to engage in the material at hand from the attentiveness
of the instructor.
Quality is best assured when ownership of developed
materials remains in the hands of faculty members. The University of Illinois'
Intellectual Property Subcommittee Report on Courseware Development and
Distribution recommends that written agreement between the courseware creator
and the administration be made in advance of any work performed. Evaluation
of learning effectiveness is also a means to ensure high quality. We suggest
a broad array of evaluation areas that includes, but is not limited to,
a comparison of learning competence with the traditional classroom.
Policy Issues for Administrators
On any issue involving pedagogy, faculty members committed
to teaching should have the first and last say. On the other hand, faculty
must be held responsible for good teaching. Online courses should not be
motivated by poor instructor performance in large classes.
Teaching innovation should be expected, respected,
and rewarded as an important scholarly activity. At the same time, not
all classes are amenable to online delivery.
To ensure the quality of a course, it is essential
that knowledgeable, committed faculty members continue to have responsibility
for course content and delivery. Therefore, intellectual property policies
should allow for faculty ownership of online courseware. The commissioning
of courses from temporary instructors should be avoided, and the university
should be wary of partnerships with education providers in which faculty
members have commercial interests.
The scenario of hundreds or thousands of students enrolling
in a well developed, essentially instructor-free online course does not
appear realistic, and efforts to do so will result in wasted time, effort,
and expense. With rare exceptions, the successful online courses we have
seen feature low student to faculty ratios. Those rare exceptions involve
extraordinary amounts of the professor's time. And besides the initial
investment in the technology, technical support for professors and students
and maintenance of hardware and software are quite expensive.
Online teaching has been said to be a shift from "efficiency"
to "quality," and quality usually doesn't come cheaply. Sound online instruction
is not likely to cost less than traditional instruction. On the other hand,
some students may be willing to pay more for the flexibility and perhaps
better instruction of high quality online courses. This is the case for
a growing number of graduate level business-related schools. However, it
is likely that a high number of "traditional" students, including the baby
boomlet, will continue to want to pay for a directly attentive professor
and the on-campus social experience.
In the short term, before history answers this question,
we think that a rigorous comparison of learning competence with traditional
classrooms can and should be done. High quality online teaching is not
just a matter of transferring class notes or a videotaped lecture to the
Internet; new paradigms of content delivery are needed. Particular features
to look for in new courses are the strength of professor-student and student-student
interactions, the depth at which students engage in the material, and the
professor's and students' access to technical support. Evidence of academic
maturity, such as critical thinking and synthesis of different areas of
knowledge should be present in more extensive online programs.
Footnote1. In 1995, the latest data available, there were 14.3 million college students in the U. S. (NCES 1997, Table 175), of which 12.2 million were undergraduate students. Of these, 47 percent are 21 and under, 63 percent are 24 and under, and 75 percent are 29 and under. The NCES tables are broken into 18-19, 20-21 and 22-24 age groups, so the 18-22 segment cannot be compared head-to-head. From the trend in the NCES data, though, it appears that the percentage of undergraduate students at or under 22 years of age is perhaps 50 to 55 percent.The number of students at 2-year institutions account for about 1/3 of the total number of students (at 2-year and 4-year institutions), independent of the age range for ages below 24 years (NCES 1997, Table 176). A significant portion of "nonresident students" is then the young and "traditional" community college student, many of whom aspire to enter 4-year institutions. The remaining 2/3rds of the 22 and under students are in 4-year colleges. That is, about 33 percent of all undergraduate college students are under 22 and attend 4-year institutions. About 90 percent of these are full time. If the 1/6th ratio mentioned above is correct, over half of "young" students attending 4-year institutions are nonresident. Since commuter schools such as UIC are a minority among 4-year schools, the 1/6th figure could mean that "nonresident" students are enrolled in 4-year residential universities, but live off campus. This may indeed be accurate. An article that recently appeared in the Chicago Tribune (June 1, 1999, section 1, p. 1) described the building trend occurring in many American universities, for the purpose of moving off-campus students back onto campus so that they might enjoy more benefits and feel more a part of the academic community. BibliographyADEC Guiding Principles for Distance Learning and Teaching. (1999). 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Appendix - TID Seminar
Syllabus
Chairman:
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