Asynchronous Learning Trends

Introduction

Before reading this, you should read about asynchronous learning at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_learning

Some futurists predict that our physical campuses will decay and crumble as higher education alternatives explode on the web. I do not agree! Most of our campuses will thrive and prosper if we learn how to bridge our curriculum gaps with the web and still maintain some of the best of what we traditionally accomplish in classes and other face-to-face encounters with our students. Also, some of our traditional courses perhaps should no longer meet in regularly scheduled class periods even if these courses are only made available to resident students. There may, however, be a shift in emphasis from the awarding of traditional degrees to the awarding of education and training certifications across disciplines. In On the Horizon, May/June 1997, James Morrison contends that by the Year 1004 leading-edge educational institutions will use competency-based certification multimedia learning modules and virual learning environments. The article cited below is one of many articles and speeches from leading educators who consider diplomas and degrees obsolete:

A seamless, cradle -to-grave educational system is within our reach, if we muster the courage and will to create it.

"Diplomas and Degrees are Obsolete," D.N. Langenberg, The Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 1997, Page A64.

This does not necessarily mean that institutions granting diplomas and degrees will crumble and fall as households become linked to the web around the world. On-campus courses will be available for certifications across a wide variety of educational accomplishments.

As network education opportunities increase, traditional universities will have to add more course choices to curricula in order to keep pace with their old and newer competitors. It is tempting to contemplate adding courses by contracting for networked courses developed by and possibly distributed from other universities. However, if high quality pedagogy is to be maintained, there are some significant costs that are being discovered in early experiences with asynchronous networked learning (ALN). ALN appears to be more like the old days where great teachers spent a lot of time with students outside of class. ALN implicitly assumes computer networking and/or CD-ROM hypertext and hypermedia. Producing good ALN materials entails significant training of faculty and reconsideration of reward structures for learning materials development of college faculty.

Results show that network (distributed education) courses will be labor intensive in terms of dealing with student messaging and evaluation of student work. Faculty or teaching assistants must be online to evaluate student written and oral communications. Studies have shown that messaging explodes exponentially if asynchronous network courses are to maximize learning effectiveness. Whether or not the "labor" (faculty, graduate students, or hired guns) will be provided by the "vendor" (say MIT) or the "customer" (say Trinity University) is a matter of conjecture. Most likely, the cost of an imported course will be less than cranking up a traditional or ALN course on campus. However, the cost of "faculty" may not be significantly reduced for reasons discussed in this paper.

Do you recall the praise that I lavished on the ethics website of a Carnegie-Mellon University Philosophy Professor named Robert Cavalier in my March 22, 000 edition of New Bookmarks? See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q1.htm#032200

Robert Cavalier now has an article entitled "Cases, Narratives, and Interactive Multimedia," in Syllabus, May 2000. pp. 20-22. The online version of the Syllabus article is not yet posted, but will eventually be available at http://www.syllabus.com/

The purpose of our evaluation of A Right to Die? The Case of Dax Cowart was to see if learning outcomes for case studies could be enhanced with the use of interactive multimedia. My Introduction to Ethics class was divided into three groups: Text, Film, and CD-ROM. Equal distribution was achieved by using student scores on previous exams plus their Verbal SAT scores.

Two graders were trained and achieved more than 90 percent in grader variabilility. The results of the students' performance were put through statistical analysis and the null hypothesis was rejected for the CD/Film and CD/Text groups. Significant statistical difference was demonstrated in favor of interactive multimedia.

I must be psychic, because I've been saying this all along --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
So has Amy Dunbar --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

"The Medium is Not the Message," by Jonathan Kaplan, Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/08/11/kaplan

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that looked at 12 years' worth of education studies, and found that online learning has clear advantages over face-to-face instruction.

The study, "An Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies," stated that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

Except for one article, on this Web site, you probably didn’t hear about it -- and neither did anyone else.

But imagine for a moment that the report came to the opposite conclusion. I’m sure that if the U.S. Department of Education had published a report showing that students in online learning environments performed worse, there would have been a major outcry in higher education with calls to shut down distance-learning programs and close virtual campuses.

I believe the reason that the recent study elicited so little commentary is due to the fact that it flies in the face of the biases held by some across the higher education landscape. Yet this study confirms what those of us working in distance education have witnessed for years: Good teaching helps students achieve, and good teaching comes in many forms.

We know that online learning requires devout attention on the part of both the professor and the student -- and a collaboration between the two -- in a different way from that of a face-to-face classroom. These critical aspects of online education are worth particular mention:

Greater student engagement: In an online classroom, there is no back row and nowhere for students to hide. Every student participates in class.

Increased faculty attention: In most online classes, the faculty’s role is focused on mentoring students and fostering discussion. Interestingly, many faculty members choose to teach online because they want more student interaction.

Constant access: The Internet is open 24/7, so students can share ideas and “sit in class” whenever they have time or when an idea strikes -- whether it be the dead of night or during lunch. Online learning occurs on the student’s time, making it more accessible, convenient, and attainable.

At Walden University, where I am president, we have been holding ourselves accountable for years, as have many other online universities, regarding assessment. All universities must ensure that students are meeting program outcomes and learning what they need for their jobs. To that end, universities should be better able to demonstrate -- quantitatively and qualitatively -- the employability and success of their students and graduates.

Recently, we examined the successes of Walden graduates who are teachers in the Tacoma, Wash., public school system, and found that students in Walden teachers’ classes tested with higher literacy rates than did students taught by teachers who earned their master’s from other universities. There could be many reasons for this, but, especially in light of the U.S. Department of Education study, it seems that online learning has contributed meaningfully to their becoming better teachers.

In higher education, there is still too much debate about how we are delivering content: Is it online education, face-to-face teaching, or hybrid instruction? It’s time for us to stop categorizing higher education by the medium of delivery and start focusing on its impact and outcomes.

Recently, President Obama remarked, “I think there’s a possibility that online education can provide, especially for people who are already in the workforce and want to retrain, the chance to upgrade their skills without having to quit their job.” As the U.S. Department of Education study concluded, online education can do that and much more.

But Kaplan above ignores some of the dark side aspects of distance education and education technology in general --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm
The biggest hurdle, in my opinion, is that if distance education is done correctly with intensive online communications, instructors soon become burned out. In an effort to avoid burn out, much of the learning effectiveness is lost. Hence the distance education paradox.

Kaplan also ignores some of the strong empirical support for online learning, especially the enlightening SCALE experiments at the University of Illinois --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

August 28, 2009 reply from Bob Jensen

One of the most successful distance education programs in the world, in my viewpoint, is the masters degree program headquartered in Vancouver called the Chartered Accountancy School of Business --- http://www.casb.com/

If you live in Western Canada, you obtain your CA designation by enrolling in the CA School of Business. The CASB program is flexible, combining the successful completion of a series of online modules with a three-year term of professional experience. Find out more about our program.

Some years back I was one of the outside reviewers brought in to examine CASB. I was impressed by the quality of this degree program and the tough standards of the program.

CASB is one of the few competency-based graduate programs in the world. By competency-based I mean that instructors have inputs in designing examinations for all students in the program, but at the same time, have no input in grading individual students. There can be no instructor-option subjective factors when assigning grades, which means no changes in grade for effort and interpersonal relationships.

The success of the CASB program, however, is a bit biased as is the success of the ADEPT Masters of Engineering distance education program in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Firstly, students admitted to these programs were top undergraduate students majoring in very difficult concentrations. Secondly, in the case of the CASB, the students are all employed full time in Chartered Accountancy firms and are under heavy pressure to do well at all stages of the three year program.

Students do meet face-to-face on some weekends (monthly?) for some live classes --- case studies and examinations..

One other competency-based distance education program that has been booming in recent years is Western Governors University in the U.S. --- http://www.wgu.edu/

Most other distance education programs allow instructors more latitude in assigning grades.

Bob Jensen

The one thing to keep in mind is that there is no one pedagogy that is best in all circumstances. And our best students are probably going to get A grades under any pedagogy --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#AssessmentIssues

The failing of distance education lies more in the instructors than the students. If done well, distance education tends to burn out instructors and takes an extraordinary amount of time relative to teaching onsite. If done poorly, the culprit is most likely the tendency to assign part-time or otherwise non-tenured instructors to the distance education courses. At the other extreme we have the dregs of the tenured faculty assigned to the distance education division.

The really bright spots in distance education are the times when the practicing professionals who are really good at their craft take on a distance education course either as a public service or as an experiment to see how they like teaching. The University of Phoenix has been good at attracting some top professionals.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has extensively studied performance of distance education
One such study was conducted by senior editor Blumenstyk
The Chronicle's Goldie Blumenstyk has covered distance education for more than a decade, and during that time she's written stories about the economics of for-profit education, the ways that online institutions market themselves, and the demise of the 50-percent rule. About the only thing she hadn't done, it seemed, was to take a course from an online university. But this spring she finally took the plunge, and now she has completed a class in government and nonprofit accounting through the University of Phoenix. She shares tales from the cy ber-classroom -- and her final grade -- in a podcast with Paul Fain, a Chronicle reporter.
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2008 (Audio) --- http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v54/i40/cyber_classroom/

· All course materials (including textbooks) online; No additional textbooks to purchase

· $1,600 fee for the course and materials

· Woman instructor with respectable academic credentials and professional experience in course content

· Instructor had good communications with students and between students

· Total of 14 quite dedicated online students in course, most of whom were mature with full-time day jobs

· 30% of grade from team projects

· Many unassigned online helper tutorials that were not fully utilized by Goldie

· Goldie earned a 92 (A-)

· She gave a positive evaluation to the course and would gladly take other courses if she had the time

· She considered the course to have a heavy workload

August 11, 2009 reply from Steve Markoff [smarkoff@KIMSTARR.ORG]

Bob:

I've always believed that the role of the teacher is one of FACILITATOR. My role in the classroom is making it EASIER for information to move from one place to another - from point A to point B. This could be from textbook to student, it could be from the outside world to the student, from another student to the student, from the student him or herself to that same student AND from teacher to student (me to them). In defining the word 'teaching', I think many people overemphasize the last transition that I mentioned, thinking that the primary movement of information is from them(the teacher) to the students. In fact, it constitutes a minority of total facilitated information flow in a college classroom. I think this misunderstanding leads many to underestimate the value of other sources in the education process other than themselves. Online content is just one of many alternative sources.

Unfortunately, online formats do allow certain professors to hide behind the electronic cloak and politely excuse themselves from the equation, which greatly hurts the student. Also, online formats can be fertile ground for professors who lack not only the desire to 'teach' but the ability and thus become mere administrators versus teachers.

steve

Hi John and Pat and Others,

I would not say that out loud to Amy Dunbar or Denny Beresford that they’re easy graders ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm

I would not say that out loud to the graduates of two principles of accounting weed out courses year after year at Brigham Young University where classes meet on relatively rare occasion for inspiration about accountancy but not technical learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Try to tell the graduates of Stanford University’s ADEPT Masters of Electrical Engineering program that they had an easier time of it because the entire program was online.

There’s an interesting article entitled how researchers misconstrue causality:

Like elaborately plumed birds … we preen and strut and display our t-values.” That was Edward Leamer’s uncharitable description of his profession in 1983.

“Cause and Effect: Instrumental variable help to isolate causal relationships, but they can be taken too far,” The Economist, August 15-21, 20098 Page 68.

It is often the case that distance education courses are taught by non-tenured instructors, and non-tenured instructors may be easier with respect to grading than tenured faculty because they are even more in need of strong teaching evaluations --- so as to not lose their jobs. The problem may have nothing whatsoever to do with online versus onsite education --- ergo misconstrued causality.

I think it’s very rewarding to look at grading in formal studies using the same full-time faculty teaching sections of online versus onsite students. By formal study, I mean using the same instructors, the same materials, and essentially the same examinations. The major five-year, multimillion dollar study that first caught my eye was the SCALE experiments on the campus of the University of Illinois where 30 courses from various disciplines were examined over a five year experiment.

Yes the SCALE experiments showed that some students got higher grades online, notably B students who became A students and C students who became A students. The online pedagogy tended to have no effect on D and F students --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

Listen to Dan Stone’s audio about the SCALE Experiments --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

But keep in mind that in the SCALE experiments, the same instructor of a course was grading both the online and onsite sections of the same course. The reason was not likely to be that online sections were easier. The SCALE experiments collected a lot of data pointing to more intense communications with instructors and more efficient use of student’s time that is often wasted in going to classes.

The students in the experiment were full time on campus students, such that the confounding problems of having adult part-time students was not a factor in the SCALE experiments of online, asynchronous learning.

A Statement About Why the SCALE Experiments Were Funded
ALN = Asynchronous Learning
We are particularly interested in new outcomes that may be possible through ALN. Asynchronous computer networks have the potential to improve contact with faculty, perhaps making self-paced learning a realizable goal for some off- and on-campus students. For example, a motivated student could progress more rapidly toward a degree. Students who are motivated but find they cannot keep up the pace, may be able to slow down and take longer to complete a degree, and not just drop out in frustration. So we are interested in what impact ALN will have on outcomes such as time-to-degree and student retention. There are many opportunities where ALN may contribute to another outcome: lowering the cost of education, e.g., by naturally introducing new values for old measures such as student-faculty ratios. A different kind of outcome for learners who are juggling work and family responsibilities, would be to be able to earn a degree or certification at home. This latter is a special focus for us.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Program in
Learning Outside the Classroom at
http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/

Another study that I love to point to was funded by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read about when one of the Chronicle’s senior editors took a Governmental Accounting Course at the University of Phoenix during which the instructor of the course had not idea that Goldie Blumenstyk was assessing how difficult or how easy the course was for students in general. I think Goldie’s audio report of her experience is still available from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Goldie came away from the course exhausted.

The Chronicle's Goldie Blumenstyk has covered distance education for more than a decade, and during that time she's written stories about the economics of for-profit education, the ways that online institutions market themselves, and the demise of the 50-percent rule. About the only thing she hadn't done, it seemed, was to take a course from an online university. But this spring she finally took the plunge, and now she has completed a class in government and nonprofit accounting through the University of Phoenix. She shares tales from the cy ber-classroom -- and her final grade -- in a podcast with Paul Fain, a Chronicle reporter.
Chronicle of Higher Education, June 11, 2008 (Audio) --- http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v54/i40/cyber_classroom/

·         All course materials (including textbooks) online; No additional textbooks to purchase

·         $1,600 fee for the course and materials

·         Woman instructor with respectable academic credentials and experience in course content

·         Instructor had good communications with students and between students

·         Total of 14 quite dedicated online students in course, most of whom were mature with full-time day jobs

·         30% of grade from team projects

·         Many unassigned online helper tutorials that were not fully utilized by Goldie

·         Goldie earned a 92 (A-)

·         She gave a positive evaluation to the course and would gladly take other courses if she had the time

·         She considered the course to have a heavy workload

"U. of Phoenix Reports on Its Students' Academic Achievement," by Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 5, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/06/3115n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

The 2006 National Survey of Student Engagement, released November 13, 2006, for the first time offers a close look at distance education, offering provocative new data suggesting that e-learners report higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and academic challenge than their on-campus peers --- http://nsse.iub.edu/NSSE_2006_Annual_Report/index.cfm

"The Engaged E-Learner," by Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, November 13, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/13/nsse

September 4, 2009 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

REPORT ON ONLINE EDUCATION STUDY

"More than one-third of public university faculty have taught an online course while more than one-half have recommended an online course to students . . . . In addition, nearly 64 percent of faculty said it takes 'somewhat more' or 'a lot more' effort to teach online compared to a face-to-face course. However, a large majority of faculty cited student needs as a primary motivator for teaching online, most commonly citing 'meet student needs for flexible access' or the 'best way to reach particular students' as the reason they choose to teach online courses."

The two-part report, "Online Learning as a Strategic Asset," published by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, summarizes the results of the APLU-Sloan National Commission on Online Learning Benchmarking Study conducted in

2008 and 2009 that surveyed 45 public institutions across the U.S. The study was "designed to illuminate how public institutions develop and implement the key organizational strategies, processes, and procedures that contribute to successful and robust online learning initiatives."

Volume I:
"A Resource for Campus Leaders" reports the results of 231 interviews conducted with administrators, faculty, and students on online learning programs and initiatives.

http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=1877

Volume II:
"The Paradox of Faculty Voices: Views and Experiences with Online Learning" reports on the results of a survey of over 10,700 faculty respondents which included a mix of tenure and non-tenure track, full- and part-time, and those who have and those who have not taught online.

http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=1879

The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU), formerly the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), was founded in 1887 and represents 186 public research universities in the United States. For more information, contact: APLU,

1307 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20005-4722 USA;

tel: 202-478-6040; fax: 202-478-6046; Web: http://www.aplu.org/

Articles providing an overview and summary of the study:

"Strong Faculty Engagement in Online Learning APLU Reports"

A PUBLIC VOICE: APLU'S ONLINE NEWSLETTER, August 31, 2009

http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1347

"Going For Distance"

INSIDE HIGHER ED, August 31, 2009

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/31/survey

"Professors Embrace Online Courses Despite Qualms About Quality"

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, August 31, 2009
http://chronicle.com/article/Professors-Embrace-Online/48235/

......................................................................

FUTURE OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

In 2006, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) created a task force to assist in "exploring issues related to scholarly journal publishing in [U.S.] humanities and social science (HSS) associations." Each of the eight collaborating associations selected a representative journal for detailed review. Among the study's findings was that "a shift to an entirely new funding model in the pure form of Open Access (author/producer pays) in which the costs of publishing research articles in journals are paid for by authors or a funding agency, and readers have access free online, is not currently a sustainable option for any of this group of journals based on the costs provided."

The report of the study, "The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing Among Social Science and Humanities Associations," is available at http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf

Founded in 1981, the National Humanities Alliance is a non-profit organization to "advance national humanities policy in the areas of research, education, preservation and public programs." For more information, contact: National Humanities Alliance, 21 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036 USA; tel: 202-296-4994; fax:

202-872-0884; Web: http://www.nhalliance.org/

See also:

"Reinventing Academic Publishing Online. Part I: Rigor, Relevance and Practice"

by Brian Whitworth and Rob Friedman

FIRST MONDAY, vol. 14, no. 8, August 3, 2009

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2609/2248

"While current computing practice abounds with innovations like online auctions, blogs, wikis, twitter, social networks and online social games, few if any genuinely new theories have taken root in the corresponding 'top' academic journals. Those creating computing progress increasingly see these journals as unreadable, outdated and irrelevant. Yet as technology practice creates, technology theory is if anything becoming even more conforming and less relevant. We attribute this to the erroneous assumption that research rigor is excellence, a myth contradicted by the scientific method itself. Excess rigor supports the demands of appointment, grant and promotion committees, but is drying up the wells of academic inspiration."

......................................................................

RECOMMENDED READING

"Recommended Reading" lists items that have been recommended to me or that Infobits readers have found particularly interesting and/or useful, including books, articles, and websites published by Infobits subscribers. Send your recommendations to carolyn_kotlas@unc.edu for possible inclusion in this column.

"Perishing Without Publishing"

By Rob Weir

INSIDE HIGHER ED, August 12, 2009

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/instant_mentor/weir11

"As one who has served (and is serving) as an associate editor for actual paper journals, let me share some bad practice observations that could sandbag your career -- and this advice almost all applies to any online peer-reviewed journal too."

-- Rob Weir

"How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write"

By Philip Yaffe

UBIQUITY, June 23 - 29, 2009

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/volume_10/v10i7_yaffe.html

" Unfortunately, most would-be authors cling to the myth that if they just put in enough effort, people will automatically want to read what they write."

-- Philip Yaffe

Bob Jensen's threads on the dark side are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

My threads on education technology in general are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Why Top Universities Will Be ALN Course "Vendors"

Before reading this section, you may want to take a brief look at The Web of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

The following quotation from a high-level Massachusetts Institute of Technology EVAT committee report says it all in terms of why top universities will offer networked courses and programs.

Risks and Opportunities. MIT could easily misjudge the impact of advanced technologies if we are not prepared. If distance education becomes well understood by other universities but not us, we are at risk of losing our reputation as leaders in education. We might find ourselves competing on price with other universities in courses like our freshman subjects. Or, on the other hand, we might overlook the opportunity to capitalize on MIT's name recognition to market education programs for the large number of students who are qualified for MIT but whom we cannot admit for lack of space.

As quoted from the Long Range Recommendations at http://www-evat.mit.edu/report/long.html

In the Executive Summary of that same EVAT Committee Report it is stated that

Of all the possible futures for MIT, the most disturbing is the one in which others find out how to offer distance education using advanced technologies, and MIT either does not learn how, or elects not to offer it. The economic strength of MIT could be seriously undercut by competition as a result.

Competitors will not just come from traditional colleges and universities. Junk bond king Michael Milken is putting together a virtual education training empire known as Knowledge Universe. To date, Knowledge Universe has invested multimillions of dollars to acquire and build an online educational empire that will challenge schools ranging from local elementary schools to Ivy League universities. The goal, according to Milken, is to use computers and networking technologies to make education and training available virtually anywhere in the world. It is too soon to predict when and how fast accredited programs will be online, but traditional colleges and universities are not waiting for the business world to take over market shares.

A message about an online course from the Harvard Law School is provided in Appendix 2.

Another reason universities may one day be vendors of networked courses is that grants have been provided to a significant number of universities to develop asynchronous networked courses. Once these courses are networked on a given campus, it becomes profitable to distribute ALN courses to other universities. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Program in Learning Outside the Classroom has issued a number of Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN ) grants including a $500,000 grant to the new virtual Western Governors University and similar (larger and smaller) grants to Brown University, Cornell University, Virginia Tech, University of Minnesota, Penn State, NYU, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and many others listed at http://www.sloan.org/Education/ALN.new.html#grants. Also see http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/ for a description of the program.

Yet another reason for distributing networked ALN courses is they appear to be more effective than traditional pedagogy if they are developed and administered properly. Readers interested in asynchronous learning experiments may want to track the ALN experiments at the University of Illinois (under a $2.1 million Sloan ALN grant for 25 classes in varying disciplines as described at http://ftp.cs.uiuc.edu/CS_INFO_SERVER/ALUMNI_INFO/newsletter/v1n6/sloan.html). experiments at the University of Illinois are discussed at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/

From: lanny arvan [SMTP:l-arvan@uiuc.edu]

Sent: Sunday, February 15, 1998 10:20 AM

Dear Prof. Jensen

Andy Bailey just sent an e-mail alerting me to your site. I appreciate all the mention of SCALE's work. I also appreciate your discussion of some of my in-house papers on ALN.

For your information, the server that houses these essays is at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~larvan/ALNessays/ALN1.html

Also, you may find the following of interest: http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~larvan/ALNessays/ALN5.html

This material is all from 1996, though essay 5 was written a bit later than the earlier essays.

We are working on some some more recent evaluation material involving the SCALE efficiency projects. If you are interested, I'll be happy to send it to you (or give you the url) when it is available.

Lanny Arvan l-arvan@uiuc.edu

SCALE, phone: 217-333-7054, fax: 217-333-7427

Department of Economics, phone: 217-333-4587, fax: 217-244-6678

An example course description is noted below:

INTERMEDIATE MICROECONOMICS: I have been teaching my undergraduate course using Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) to enhance instruction. We have been using a conferencing program called FirstClass to have students interact with each other, me, and on-line undergraduate TAs. We have used FirstClass to have the written homework submitted and graded electronically. This semester we will also be using the Web software "Mallard" for having the students do quizzes online. Click here to go to the Mallard home page of Econ 300. This site is password protected. You can get course information which is not password protected by following this link Course Information. From there you can access some other interesting links.

From Lanny Arvan in the Department of Economics http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/system/faculty/profiles/arvan.html

I must be psychic, because I've been saying this all along --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
So has Amy Dunbar --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm

"The Medium is Not the Message," by Jonathan Kaplan, Inside Higher Ed, August 11, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/08/11/kaplan

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that looked at 12 years' worth of education studies, and found that online learning has clear advantages over face-to-face instruction.

The study, "An Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies," stated that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

Except for one article, on this Web site, you probably didn’t hear about it -- and neither did anyone else.

But imagine for a moment that the report came to the opposite conclusion. I’m sure that if the U.S. Department of Education had published a report showing that students in online learning environments performed worse, there would have been a major outcry in higher education with calls to shut down distance-learning programs and close virtual campuses.

I believe the reason that the recent study elicited so little commentary is due to the fact that it flies in the face of the biases held by some across the higher education landscape. Yet this study confirms what those of us working in distance education have witnessed for years: Good teaching helps students achieve, and good teaching comes in many forms.

We know that online learning requires devout attention on the part of both the professor and the student -- and a collaboration between the two -- in a different way from that of a face-to-face classroom. These critical aspects of online education are worth particular mention:

Greater student engagement: In an online classroom, there is no back row and nowhere for students to hide. Every student participates in class.

Increased faculty attention: In most online classes, the faculty’s role is focused on mentoring students and fostering discussion. Interestingly, many faculty members choose to teach online because they want more student interaction.

Constant access: The Internet is open 24/7, so students can share ideas and “sit in class” whenever they have time or when an idea strikes -- whether it be the dead of night or during lunch. Online learning occurs on the student’s time, making it more accessible, convenient, and attainable.

At Walden University, where I am president, we have been holding ourselves accountable for years, as have many other online universities, regarding assessment. All universities must ensure that students are meeting program outcomes and learning what they need for their jobs. To that end, universities should be better able to demonstrate -- quantitatively and qualitatively -- the employability and success of their students and graduates.

Recently, we examined the successes of Walden graduates who are teachers in the Tacoma, Wash., public school system, and found that students in Walden teachers’ classes tested with higher literacy rates than did students taught by teachers who earned their master’s from other universities. There could be many reasons for this, but, especially in light of the U.S. Department of Education study, it seems that online learning has contributed meaningfully to their becoming better teachers.

In higher education, there is still too much debate about how we are delivering content: Is it online education, face-to-face teaching, or hybrid instruction? It’s time for us to stop categorizing higher education by the medium of delivery and start focusing on its impact and outcomes.

Recently, President Obama remarked, “I think there’s a possibility that online education can provide, especially for people who are already in the workforce and want to retrain, the chance to upgrade their skills without having to quit their job.” As the U.S. Department of Education study concluded, online education can do that and much more.

So much learning now takes place online, including faculty office hours, study groups, and lectures.
What extra value are you going to need to offer to bring the students of the future to your college?
Read the new report, "The College of 2020: Students," from Chronicle Research Services.

"THE COLLEGE OF 2020: STUDENTS," The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 2009 ---
http://research.chronicle.com/asset/TheCollegeof2020ExecutiveSummary.pdf?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

This is the first Chronicle Research Services report in a three-part series on what higher education will look like in the year 2020. It is based on reviews of research and data on trends in higher education, interviews with experts who are shaping the future of colleges, and the results of a poll of members of a Chronicle Research Services panel of admissions officials.

To buy the full, data-rich 50-page report, see the links at the end of this Executive Summary. Later reports in this series will look at college technology and facilities in 2020, and the faculty of the future.

"The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age," by Jane Park, Creative Commons, June 26th, 2009 --- http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15522

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) announced a new report called, “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age,” now available at MIT Press. The report is in response to our changing times, and addresses what traditional educational institutions must know to keep up. From the announcement,

“Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg in an abridged version of their book-in-progress, The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, argue that traditional institutions must adapt or risk a growing mismatch between how they teach and how this new generation learns. Forms and models of learning have evolved quickly and in fundamentally new directions. Yet how we teach, where we teach, who teaches, and who administers and serves have changed only around the edges. This report was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in connection with its grant making initiative on Digital Media and Learning.”

A central finding was that “Universities must recognize this new way of learning and adapt or risk becoming obsolete. The university model of teaching and learning relies on a hierarchy of expertise, disciplinary divides, restricted admission to those considered worthy, and a focused, solitary area of expertise. However, with participatory learning and digital media, these conventional modes of authority break down.”

Not coincidentally, one of the ten principles for redesigning learning institutions was open source education: “Traditional learning environments convey knowledge via overwhelmingly copyright-protected publications. Networked learning, contrastingly, is an “open source” culture that seeks to share openly and freely in both creating and distributing knowledge and products.”

The report is available in PDF via CC BY-NC-ND.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/Future_of_Learning.pdf

Also see http://www.convergemag.com/workforce/47240132.html

Our Compassless Colleges --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Berkowitz

Professor Arvan provides an online essay entitled "Economics of ALN: 1. Output Effects" at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~larvan/ALNessays/ALN1.html , the lead quote reads as follows (emphasis added):

Many of us early adopters of ALN contend that "it works," --- students do better under ALN than in the traditional approach. This essay is intended to provide an economics framework for explaining what is going on here, across disciplines, to suggest future directions for validating our contention, and to aid instructors in thinking about how to use ALN in their course.

In the above essay, Professor Arvan discusses ALN in terms of students classified as "Eager Beavers" versus "Drones"versus "Sluggos." He contends that ALN approaches should differ for each type of student. Another essay of interest by him is an ALN time management essay given at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~larvan/ALNessays/ALN5.html

One of the most complete listing of asynchronous advantages and disadvantages can be found by using the search engine at the University of Illinois home page at http://www.uiuc.edu/ On February 12, 1998 this search engine generated 1,494 documents on asynchronous learning topics at the University of Illinois. experiments at the University of Illinois are discussed at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/

Click on http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/slide01.htm to see Professor Oakley's PowerPoint slide on grade impacts in the course ECE 270. Early evidence indicates that students do as well or better in acynchronous courses that do not meet in classrooms. Another PowerPoint slide on the same page shows substantial increases in communication between a student and the instructor(s) and other students.

"New Book by Pollster John Zogby Says Online Education Is Rapidly Gaining Acceptance," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 12, 23008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3236&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

John Zogby, president & CEO of the polling company Zogby International, says that American students are quickly warming up to the idea of taking classes online, just as consumers have taken to the idea of renting movies via Netflix and buying microbrewed beer.

In a new book by Mr. Zogby released today, he said that polls show a sharp increase in acceptance of online education in the past year. For more on the story, see a free article in today’s Chronicle.

National surveys show that a majority of Americans think online universities offer a lower quality of education than do traditional institutions. But a prominent pollster, John Zogby, says in a book being released today that it won't be long before American society takes to distance education as warmly as it has embraced game-changing innovations like microbrewed beers, Flexcars, and "the simple miracle of Netflix."

The factor that will close that "enthusiasm gap" is the growing use of distance education by well-respected universities, Mr. Zogby predicts in the book, The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House).

The book, which is based on Zogby International polls and other studies, also touches on public attitudes toward politics, consumer habits, spirituality, and international affairs, and on what men and women really do want from each other. Mr. Zogby says polls detect signs of society's emerging resistance to big institutions, and its de-emphasis on things and places. "We're redefining geography and space," he says—and a widening acceptance of online education is part of the trend.

Today there is still a "cultural lag" between the public's desire for flexible ways to take college courses and what the most-established players offer, Mr. Zogby said in an interview with The Chronicle on Monday. "There's a sense that those who define the standard haven't caught on yet," he said.

But Mr. Zogby writes that polling by his organization shows that attitudes about online education are changing fast. His polling also points to other challenges that colleges will face as they race to serve a worldwise generation of 18-to-29-year-olds that Mr. Zogby calls "First Globals."

In one 2007 poll of more 5,000 adults, Zogby International found that 30 percent of respondents were taking or had taken an online course, and another 50 percent said they would consider taking one. He says the numbers might skew a little high because this poll was conducted online and the definition of an online course was broad, including certificate programs or training modules offered by employers.

Only 27 percent of respondents agreed that "online universities and colleges provide the same quality of education" as traditional institutions. Among those 18 to 24 years old, only 23 percent agreed.

An even greater proportion of those polled said it was their perception that employers and academic professionals thought more highly of traditional institutions than online ones.

Rapid Shift in Attitude

Yet in another national poll in December 2007, conducted for Excelsior College, 45 percent of the 1,004 adults surveyed believed "an online class carries the same value as a traditional-classroom class," and 43 percent of 1,545 chief executives and small-business owners agreed that a degree earned by distance learning "is as credible" as one from a traditional campus-based program.

Mr. Zogby said that differing attitudes in two polls within a year show that "the gap was closing"—and he said that wasn't as surprising as it might seem. As with changing perceptions about other cultural phenomena, "these paradigm shifts really are moving at lightning speed."

That, says Mr. Zogby, is why he writes about online universities in a chapter—"Dematerializing the Paradigm"—that discusses the rise of car-sharing companies like Flexcar (now merged with Zipcar), the emergence of Internet blogs as a source of news and information, and the popularity of microbrewed beer.

And while it may be true that microbrews and Zipcars, at least, are still very much niche products, Mr. Zogby says they are signs of transcendent change—just like the distance-education courses that are being offered by more and more institutions across the country. "When you add up all the niche products, it's a market unto itself," he says.

In the book, Mr. Zogby also highlights the emerging influence of the First Globals, whom his book calls "the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history." First Globals, he says, are more socially tolerant and internationally aware.

It is these First Globals, he writes, who are shaping what he says is nothing short of a "fundamental reorientation of the American character away from wanton consumption and toward a new global citizenry in an age of limited resources."

Higher education, he said in the interview, needs to take notice and adapt. These days, he said, students are much more likely to have experienced other cultures firsthand, either as tourists or because they have immigrated from someplace else. Whether college for them is a traditional complex of buildings or an interactive online message board, said Mr. Zogby, "there is a different student on campus."

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education are at the following sites:

"The Great Debate: Effectiveness of Technology in Education," by Patricia Deubel, T.H.E. Journal, November 2007 ---
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21544

According to Robert Kuhn (2000), an expert in brain research, few people understand the complexity of that change. Technology is creating new thinking that is "at once creative and innovative, volatile and turbulent" and "nothing less than a shift in worldview." The change in mental process has been brought about because "(1) information is freely available, and therefore interdisciplinary ideas and cross-cultural communication are widely accessible; (2) time is compressed, and therefore reflection is condensed and decision-making is compacted; (3) individuals are empowered, and therefore private choice and reach are strengthened and one person can have the presence of an institution" (sec: Concluding Remarks).

If we consider thinking as both individual (internal) and social (external), as Rupert Wegerif (2000) suggests, then "[t]echnology, in various forms from language to the internet, carries the external form of thinking. Technology therefore has a role to play through supporting improved social thinking (e.g. providing systems to mediate decision making and collective reasoning) and also through providing tools to help individuals externalize their thinking and so to shape their own social worlds" (p. 15).

The new tools for communication that have become part of the 21st century no doubt contribute to thinking. Thus, in a debate on effectiveness or on implementation of a particular tool, we must also consider the potential for creativity, innovation, volatility, and turbulence that Kuhn (2000) indicates.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Why All Universities May Be ALN Course "Customers"

Before reading this section, you may want to take a brief look at The Web of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

Synchronous education in a scheduled sequence of classes will face serious new competition of asynchronous education distributed on networks where students learn and communicate most any day and most any time of day and study at their own paces. An example is the new online Western Governors University at http://www.wgu.edu/ . Now all western states are part of WGU and some states east of the Mississippi River (e.g., Indiana) are investigating how to join up. Another example is California Virtual University. Sherri Moore sent me the following message:

July 22, 1998
Please consider adding a link from your Web site to the California Virtual University at http://www.california.edu

The CVU integrates into one site on the Internet the online and technology-mediated classes of 92 accredited California colleges and universities, including Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley and USC. In total, more than 1,600 courses are available.

Visitors to the CVU Web site can register to be notified by e-mail when new courses are added by accredited California campuses. The course notification system can be personalized to match specific interest areas. The CVU is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking education online.

Thank you for considering this request
Moore, Sherri [SMoore@VUDesign.ca.gov]

Update in April 1999
California Virtual University will cease operations as an independent distance-education institution, following reluctance on the part of the venture’s partners—the state’s three public-college systems and the association of independent colleges—to put up $1 million a year for the next three years to cover operating costs. CVU will retain its searchable Web site <http://www.california.edu>, which lists available courses at more than 100 participating colleges and universities. Funding already received by CVU, including $250,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation and $375,000 from corporate sponsorships, has already been spent, in part on developing the Web site. CEO Stanley Chodorow said in a mid-March e-mail message that "We just did not have enough fuel to get up to takeoff speed." (Chronicle of Higher Education 2 Apr 99)

Ideally, faculty or other expert help is available online to both help students and evaluate student work and ideas. In addition, asynchronous courses may schedule synchronous virtual online meetings of subsets of students or entire classes of students. Networked courses may thus be synchronous and asynchronous, although the technical learning components are largely asynchronous.

The largest growth opportunities in learning and education lie in networked courses and programs. Everybody expects high-prestige "vendor" universities and corporations to invest in ALN courses and market them based upon vendor name recognition (e.g., MIT or AT&T). Eventually, all universities may become "customers" for ALN courses developed at other universities. Even universities that sell an ALN course in one discipline may contract to purchase an ALN course in another discipline. The main reason will be the need to fill gaps in curricula with more courses than can be feasibly developed and delivered by resident faculty. Current gaps will be more visible as online education opportunities become more popular due to a wide array of specialty courses not presently found in most traditional curricula.

Although US News and World Report and Money Magazine have both given Trinity University the distinction of being Number 1 in its classification (Western Region), there are gaps in the teeth of its curriculum. There are gaps in the curriculum of literally every university, and the gaps are more serious in smaller universities that try to live up to coverage across multiple disciplines implied by the term "university."

For example, the Business Administration program at Trinity University needs to introduce curriculum coverage of newer business technology courses that are not feasible to develop and administer with existing faculty. We especially need to add elective courses in specialized areas. Examples of the types of specialties are listed later on in this paper. Adding new faculty and course coverage in an array of varied specialties is not deemed an option in the foreseeable future.

A factor in ALN use is hardware, software, and instructor abilities to handle ALN. Potential advantages of ALN in existing courses are so monumental that most campuses are experimenting with ALN at the moment and contemplating more widespread deployment for existing courses. Advantages and disadvantages of doing so are discussed in http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm#Asynchronous1.

Advantages include the following and are elaborated for computer aided learning (CAL) at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm#Advantages4:

The main advantages of asynchronous CAL are that student learning is self-paced and interactive.

Educators can experiment in creative ways using unique and intriguing WWW sites.

Other advantages are remote delivery of cost-efficient and conveniently distributed "virtual" courses.

Cross-cultural and cross-functional teams of students can be formed in virtual education and research.

Networked learning combines fun and education for students as they surf the Internet in teams or on their own.

Colleges are expanding their markets with CAL in lifelong learning programs.

Both better student performance and higher evaluations of instructors can result.

You must ultimately adopt new learning technologies in your courses and program curricula..

You can experiment with paperless courses.

You can become a part of a world wide movement of researchers experimenting with new and creative ways to utilize modern technology in education.

Accounting educators can react to appeals of the Accounting Education Change Commission.

You will find funding sources for technology research and application increasing at a much faster rate in the future.

You may discover that new technology can lead to more cross-discipline research and applications.

You can avoid teaching toward obsolescence.

You can play a greater part in developing and sharing learning materials with professors and students in foreign nations, notably underdeveloped nations.

Ways to Avoid the Disadvantages of Asynchronous Modules and
Courses are listed below for computer aided learning (CAL) and elaborated upon in greater detail at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm#Ways2

Try to resist temptations to dehumanize some courses by eliminating face-to-face encounters.

Asynchronous CAL can be extremely effective for learning technical material before coming to class. However, be reasonable about the time expected for network learning outside of class.

Delete as well as add material with each revision (or create optional rather than required links to material of less importance in the course).

Obtain student feedback on CAL modules.

Avoid requiring rote memorization of CAL online material.

Try to avoid getting the image of being a computer hacker more interested in the machines per se than what they can do for your teaching and research.

Remember that it is usually more important to inspire students to want to learn than it is to have them learn technical content in any particular course.

Remember the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule.

Try to attain face-to-face socialization benefits in virtual universities.

There are risks of obvious and not-so-obvious copyright violations even in uncontrolled distributions on CDs, intranets, and the WWW.

There are risks of copyright violations due to uncertainties in Education Fair Use Laws covering new technologies.

Research on effectiveness of CAL is often futile due to the pace of technological change, the variation in learning ingredients, and Hawthorne effects.

Results of some experiments in virtual learning at Texas Christian University are reported at http://zeta.is.tcu.edu/~blobert/vle/project.html.

When ALN becomes more widely deployed in existing courses, it becomes much easier to expand the curriulum by "buying into" selected off-campus ALN courses from other colleges and universities.

Bridging the Gaps

At a recent Department of Business Administration faculty meeting considering how to add more technology courses, I suggested that we look into contracting for ALN courses emerging in other universities, business corporations, and public accounting firms. My suggestion was met with extreme skepticism by faculty at the present time. However, I predict that by Year 2010 a significant proportion of required and elective courses will be globally networked by universities and business firms. Vendors having solid gold name recognition for quality will probably have a competitive advantage in distributing ALN courses.

Delivery will not be in the form of the dying synchronous distance education classes transmitted to remote sites by television. Instead it will be in the form of largely asynchronous networked courses on the Internet or intranets. Many of those networked courses will have such prestige "brand names" of Stanford University, MIT, Harvard University, Princeton University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, University of Texas, University of Illinois, etc. Of course, organizations with less brand recognition may offer selected ALN courses of outstanding quality. Some Internet courses may be given by television networks who face a shrinking market as viewers move to the web. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television networking of adult education and degree programs is now moving to the web (see http://www.pbs.org/learn/). Still other courses are available from prominent consulting and accounting firms such as EDS, Andersen Consulting, Arthur D. Little, Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte and Touche, etc. There are now over 1,600 corporate colleges and universities, most of which are gearing up for online delivery and full accreditation of their courses and degree programs. A rising number of these corporate universities already have brand recognition like General Electric, Motorola, AT&T, etc.

Junk bond king Michael Milken is putting together a virtual education training empire known as Knowledge Universe. To date, Knowledge Universe has invested multimillions of dollars to acquire and build an online educational empire that will challenge schools ranging from local elementary schools to Ivy League universities. The goal, according to Milken, is to use computers and networking technologies to make education and training available virtually anywhere in the world.

Corporate universities are not a new idea. However, their explosive growth in the networking technology paradigm shift is a new phenomenon that makes it possible for traditional universities to bridge curricula gaps. Corporate university programs will increasingly compete with traditional universities for entire degree programs. The McGraw-Hill giant publishing conglomerate has launched its online McGraw-Hill World University described at http://www.mhcec.com/. Before long MHWU intends to network fully accredited degree programs in higher education.

The firm of Arthur D. Little is one of the most prestigious and well known consulting firms in the world. One of its profit centers is the Arthur D. Little (ADL) School of Management described below:

Since 1964, more than 3,200 professionals from over 115 countries have participated in the School of Management's (SOM) Programs. Chartered in 1971, SOM received accreditation in 1971 from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc., and is currently a pre-candidate for accreditation from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).

Introductory statement at http://www.arthurdlittle.com/default.htm

Although not yet available for network distribution, ADL may one day make it possible for Trinity University students to take some of its courses in specialty areas such as the selected courses shown below that are in the present ADL School of Management curriculum:

Management Information Systems
Multinational Management Simulation
National Strategies and the Global Economy
Industry and Competitive Analysis Project
Management of Technology
Strategy Implementation
Systems Thinking Simulation
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
Creating a Learning Organization
Project Management
Total Quality Management
Transnational Negotiation Skills
Strategic Management of Information Systems

For particular training specialties, many corporations now use asynchronous "Self paced Professional Training" network courses from the University of Phoenix at http://www.uophx.edu/. These include many management topics and selected FASB standards. The prestigious Executive Education Network (EXEN) uses name recognition universities to deliver a wide array of courses, including the following courses listed at http://www.exen.com/evaluations.html:

Carnegie-Mellon University

604 Manufacturing Excellence

Center for Creative Leadership

617 Creative Leadership
618 Women as Leadership
619 Assessing Leadership

Harvard Business School Publishing

614 Managing in the Marketspace

Pennsylvania State University

609 Human Resource Management Program
620 Program for Strategic Leadership

Southern Methodist University

606 Mid-Management Program
625 First Line Management Program

University of Massachusetts at Amherst

611 How to Make Successful Presentations

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

605 Leadership into the 21st Century
615 International Business Leadership

University of Southern California

608 Leading Through Change
616 Managing the Global Workforce
626 Implementing Change

University of Texas at Austin, IC² Institute

621 Corporate Entrepreneurship

Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc., at http://www.educate.com/learningcenters/aboutsylvan.html is a leading provider of global education services to families, schools and industry. Recently, Sylvan formed a noteworthy joint subsidiary company with MCI called Caliber Learning Network that is distributed with latest high quality technology. Sylvan also has partnerships in distributed learning with the following organizations:

The National Geographic Society

Johns Hopkins University

Educational Testing Service

The National Association of Secondary School Principals

Children and Adults With Attention Disorder Deficits

One of the best known global Internet education systems with the latest technologies is UCLA’s The Home Education Network (THEN) at http://www.then.com/. Current online programs include the following:

Award in General Business Studies (9 course program)

Cross-Cultural Language and Academic Development
(CLAD) Program (5 courses)

Program in Online Teaching (6 course program)

Pre-MBA Skills and Test Preparation Program (9 course program)

All eyes are now on the Western Governors University ( http://www.wgu.edu ) that is cranking up fully accredited degree programs on the Internet. What is unique about WGU is that its curriculum is comprised of many course offerings from leading colleges and universities in states west of the Mississippi River and as far away as Western Samoa. Some states east of the Mississippi are now seeking to join WGU. Sally Johnstone and Dennis Jones report in (On the Horizon, November/December 1997) that faculty reward structures at WGU will place great emphasis on curriculum design and learning materials development.

Explosion of Corporate/University Partnerships

"E-learning Demand to Double in 2005," SmartPros, January 7, 2004 --- http://www.smartpros.com/x46477.xml

Demand for online courses will almost double in 2005, as professionals and companies realize e-learning's distinct advantages, according to officials at RedVector.com, a Tampa-based company that offers online courses to professionals involved in the design and construction industries.

A recent survey of RedVector.com clients indicates professionals and corporate leaders had different reasons for adopting online education. Professionals cited the variety and depth of course offerings while corporate leaders cited cost savings and relevance of courses to business goals.

Recent research indicates the entire online professional education industry may experience similar growth in 2005:

Spending on online continuing education passed the $9 billion mark in 2003, according to IDC Research, and grew to between $12 and 14 billion in 2004, according to Bersin and Associates. IDC predicts a 30 percent increase in yearly e-learning spending worldwide through 2008. The number of companies using online learning to train employees will grow by 50 percent in 2005, according to Bersin and Associates. Economics has been a driving force behind growth in online professional education. With online courses, companies no longer have to pay travel and hotel costs and employees can be more productive since they aren't spending time traveling.

Growth in online learning is also driven by specialization in course offerings. According to the Distance Education and Training Council, more than 500 companies and organizations now offer online courses focusing on specific industries and professions.

Some universities have programs dedicated to particular firms such as the Ernst and Young's employee masters degree programs (University of Virginia and Notre Dame) and PwC's employee MBA program at the University of Georgia.

When I made a presentation at the University of Georgia on November 13, 1998 my afternoon audience was comprised of faculty members in college of Business (including former FASB Chairman Denny Beresford) who are teaching in the online MBA Program resulting from a partnering of the University of Georgia and PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC). All students in the program take this graduate degree program online while continuing to work for PWC (mainly in the consulting division). While I was in Athens on November 12, Denny invited me to sit in on a session in which the program faculty discussed such things as heavy messaging that often results from delivering courses asynchronously.

The partnership mentioned above is one of many in a rising trend of partnerships between corporations and universities for delivery of online and on-campus degree programs. An excellent review of this trend is given by Jeanne C. Meister in a book entitled Corporate Universities (McGraw Hill Companies, 1998). The book is reviewed in T.H.E. Journal, October 1998, pp. 20-26. An online version of the review article temporarily available at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/current/news.asp

I suggest that you download the above file before it disappears from the web. Among the interesting passages from Jeanne Meister is the following passage (which she elaborates upon in the book):

"It's the way we've always done things" must be changed to recognize that the educational process must focus less on the adult lecturer and more on the student learner. This shift in mindset will foster increased responsibility on the part of learners to take charge of their own learning and hence their careers. Based upon our interviews with scores of corporate university deans and deans of graduate business schools as well as continuing education, we have identified four types of corporate/college partnerships as best practice examples. These include: the development of customized executive educational programs, the creation of customized degree programs, the formation of a learning partner consortium and finally, in some cases, actual accreditation of the corporate university.

The explosion of corporate universities and corporate partnerships with traditional universities offers many new opportunities and challenges. This explosion offers all sorts of non-traditional career paths for educators, especially educators interested in development of learning materials for online courses. There are also some concerns at are mentioned below at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/255wp.htm#Corporate

The Controversial Ernst&Young and PriceWaterhouse Coopers
Funded Masters Degree Programs

Will this become the masters degree in accounting model for all top accounting firms and large business firms in the future? Will more private firms like Ernst & Young (E&Y) and PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) partner with one or more traditional universities and fund a customized program in which the firms are a heavy players in calendar, work load, and student admission decisions? Students in most cases will be existing or incoming employees of the firms.

PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) has a custom MBA program leading to an MBA degree from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business with the following attributes:

1. Students in the program are all full-time employees of PWC.

2. The program is online in an asynchronous mode.

3. The University of Georgia designs and delivers the courses with full-time faculty.

4. PWC pays the tuition and other fees.

The PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC) MBA program is not quite as controversial as the E&Y Master Plan. PWC's program is aimed mostly at existing consulting division employees and is not used as heavily as a recruiting enticement for graduating students. It is aimed at employees who probably were not even business majors. It leads to an MBA degree and does not compete with masters of accounting programs. It does not lead up to taking the CPA examination. It also involves many fewer students than the new E&Y program at Notre Dame and the University of Virginia.

Nevertheless it does suffer from some of the controversies such as the role it plays in admission of students, its role in setting workloads of employees who are working while taking the customized program, and the use of faculty and facilities that are heavily subsidized by taxpayers if the participating university is state supported. Even in the case of private univeristies, private industry is benefitting from the tax exempt status of the university delivering the customized program for the firm's employees.

I cannot even find a web site discussing the PWC MBA program at the PWC web site. You can read about it at
http://www.cba.uga.edu/mba/home/deanbio.html

Two universities are participating in the E&Y customized program. The program is an employment fringe benefit and even provides income ($1,000 per month) in addition to tuition, fees, room, board, and books. In the September through April period, students can live at home, take two distance education courses while earning a full-time E&Y salary that is not limited to $1,000 per month.

Ernst & Young (E&Y) has a funded customized program leading to an Masters of Accounting degree from the the University of Notre Dame or the University of Virginia. The web site is at
http://www.ey.com/careers/masters/default.asp

Notre Dame's web site of interest is at http://www.nd.edu/~acctdept/careers.htm#2

My interests in the Ernst & Young partnerships with Notre Dame and the University of Virginia are somewhat different than my interest in the PWC MBA partnership. In the first place, an E&Y partnership does not entail networked learning in a heavy way. Two of the ten required courses are distance education courses delivered in remote E&Y offices while students are working full time. Those two courses are synchronous rather than asynchronous on the web. The Readiness Program and eight graduate courses meet in traditional classroom settings while students are in residence on the university campuses.

My interest in the E&Y masters degree programs is focused mainly upon the combination of student recruitment, curriculum design, and the way that program at first seemed to me to be doing something that is impossible. What seemed impossible to me were the following points that I concluded immediately after reading the packet of materials being sent to universities to distribute to undergraduate students and the information at the E&Y web site on "The Master Plan" at http://www.ey.com/careers/masters/default.asp

The program mixes former accounting majors having 10 or more courses in accounting with other business majors having as few as two courses in basic accounting.
Students who are not former accounting majors must attend a five-week Readiness Program that provides 10 credits of undergraduate accounting credit.
The custom E&Y program is a lock-step program for all students and does not have separate tracks for accounting versus non-accounting majors. E&Y will not fund taking of additional undergraduate accounting courses other than those provided in the five-week Readiness Program.
After taking ten courses for 30 credits from Notre Dame or UVA, the capstone course is a non-credit CPA Review Course delivered by E&Y instructors.

The fact that the masters degrees are designated as accounting degrees and that the capstone course is the CPA Review course, leads students and people like me into believing that these degrees enable graduates from the E&Y program to sit for the CPA examination. Although many of us that teach in universities having some form of masters programs in accounting try to some extent to avoid having the CPA examination dictate our curricula, we generally do make it possible for our graduates to meet the minimum requirements to sit for the CPA examination in our own states and many other states.

The Masters in Accounting degree is free in the sense that E&Y pays a salary plus providing funding for all tuition, fees, room, board, and travel costs. In return, the student is indentured for three years and must repay the education costs if he or she should voluntarily leave E&Y before the three year commitment is satisfied.

What concerned me more than any other thing in all of this was a claim made (in the student application form and at the E&Y web site) that reads as follows:

"We worked with the universities to ensure that the Master's Program offers you the best education through a schedule which also allows you to develop skills and knowledge to prepare you to excel at Ernst & Young."

This said to me that this program and its curriculum plan were "the best" vis-à-vis what students can get from other masters programs in accounting, including our program at Trinity University. There was no detailed curriculum information available on the E&Y program, but it appeared to me that given the five things enumerated above, it would be impossible to accomplish such our own program for students not having more accounting prerequisites.

Admittedly, I jumped to some erroneous conclusions prior to learning more about the E&Y Master Plan curriculum. Belatedly, it now appears to me that graduates from the E&Y program will not be allowed to sit for the CPA examination in Texas and some other states unless they take nearly an extra year of accounting coursework before or after completing the masters in accounting degree program funded by E&Y.

I sent my first message about the E&Y Master Plan to the aecm list serve and expressed some of my off-the-wall concerns in my web document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#ErnstandYoung . Those two things resulted in email messages from various educators, including messages from Notre Dame faculty members Tom Frecka and Kevin Mislewicz. I reproduced Tom's message in the above web document.

Kevin's message was less detailed, but it did give me my first insight into the curriculum. Kevin informed me that the E&Y Master Plan's curriculum differs only slightly from M.S. in Accountancy curriculum that Notre Dame offers to students in its regular program. The main difference is the lock-step calendar for the E&Y Master Plan and possibly fewer choices due to the customized E&Y calendar. That calendar reads as follows:

Mar-April (Preparing): CD-ROM Review Course on Introductory Accounting
May-June (Home&EY): Readiness Program for non-accounting majors (10 credits)
June-Aug (University): Core Program on campus (9 credits)
Sept-Aug (Home&EY): Distance Learning (3 credits, one night per week)
Jan-April (Home&EY): Distance Learning (3 credits, one night per week)
June-Aug (University): Core Program on campus (15 credits)
Aug-Nov (Home&EY): CPA Review Program

The E&Y Master Plan curriculum plan at Notre Dame is shown below:

Summer, 1999

Negotiations/Communication

Taxes and Business Strategy

Financial Statement Analysis (same as MBA elective)

Fall, 1999 Distance Learning (Synchronous)

Finance (Investments, same as MBA elective)

Spring, 2000 Distance Learning (Syncrhronous)

Business Risk Analysis

Summer, 2000

Advanced Assurance Services course

Special Topics in Financial Reporting (securitization, derivatives, hedging,...)

Business Consulting Course

Advanced Finance Course (still being developed)

Advanced Technology Course (to be developed jointly by ND, UVA and E&Y)

TOTAL GRADUATE CREDIT HOURS = 30

Non-accounting majors will also receive 10 undergraduate credits for the Readiness Program

Financial accounting (4.5 credits)

Managerial accounting (2.0 credits)

Auditing (2.0 credits)

Taxation (1.5 credits)

The above Financial Reporting & Assurance Services curriculum appears to me to be an outstanding curriculum for former accounting majors. It also appears to be an outstanding curriculum for non-accounting majors since there does not appear to be all that much accounting in the program, at least not to the point where prerequisites in intermediate accounting, income taxes, auditing, and managerial accounting are necessary. However, for non-accounting majors there is a major drawback relative to virtually all masters of accounting programs in the U.S. In many states, especially Texas, the graduates would not meet the requirements, in my judgment, to apply to sit for the CPA examination. If taking the CPA is important to such a graduate and passing it is important for career advancement in E&Y, the non-accounting graduate from Notre Dame will have to take more accounting courses just to sit for the CPA examination unless he or she can sit for the examination in some state that has less explicit application requirements than Texas. The Texas requirements include 30 credits beyond basic accounting courses that cover the following::

Intermediate Accounting

Advanced Accounting

Auditing, Internal Accounting Control and Evaluation

Financial Statement Analysis

Accounting Theory

Not-for Profit Accounting

Six credits of Income Tax

Accounting Systems

Accounting Report Writing

Other recommended courses and areas are suggested in the law

At this point in time, I must assume that the UVA curriculum for the E&Y Master Plan will be somewhat similar to the Notre Dame curriculum. I viewed the curriculum for regular students not part of the E&Y program at http://www.commerce.virginia.edu/ms_accounting/requirements.htm . That curriculum is a much more traditional master of accountancy curriculum than the above Notre Dame curriculum. However, I cannot imagine business majors having only one or two basic accounting courses entering that UVA curriculum without taking intermediate accounting and some other prerequisite accounting modules. Most certainly I cannot imagine such students being mixed in with former accounting majors in many of the listed UVA graduate accounting courses. At this point, however, my comments are restricted to the above Notre Dame curriculum.

This is part of what prospective students read about in their proposed "Master Plans":

ERNST & YOUNG LLP

Your Master Plan
Information For Prospective Candidates Interested in
Ernst & Youngs Master of Science in Accountancy Program

Make this Program part of Your Master Plan

Leader…winner…visionary…standard-setter…bold…willing to take risks…Do these words describe you? They definitely describe Ernst & Young and its focus on the entrepreneurial spirit. Over the past three years, Ernst & Young LLP has been the fastest growing of the largest multinational professional services firms. And, as indicated by our record growth in 1998, our momentum continues to accelerate. We attract multi-talented, motivated individuals who seek to be on the cutting edge of technology and knowledge. Thus, we have developed a unique Program in which Ernst & Young will pay for you to obtain your Master of Science in Accountancy at a premier institution while working at the firm.

Why should you apply? As a young professional, you most likely desire to distinguish yourself early on from other business graduates to jump start your career. Enrolling in the E&Y Masters Program is the first step. Every professional at Ernst & Young is dedicated to growth and speed to market, speed to reacting to new opportunities, and the speed to stay ahead of the competition. We are no longer just in the business of debits and credits. Thus, we seek professionals who are committed to becoming the top business advisors in the ever-changing global marketplace. Do you want to position yourself ahead of the rest? Completing a Masters degree while working at Ernst & Young offers you that opportunity.

Ernst & Young has established Programs with two top tier schools; the University of Notre Dame and the University of Virginia. These Programs promise to be premier graduate experiences with customized and innovative curriculums. Obtaining your Masters degree from one of these Programs provides you with an exceptional opportunity to begin your career with a competitive edge.

This is a highly competitive Program and we expect to recruit the best business school candidates. Please see your E&Y campus recruiter for your school, or if unsure of your E&Y recruiter, please contact one of the contacts listed below to see if you qualify.

A message from Tom Frecka
Director, M.S. in Accountancy Programs,
University of Notre Dame

Bob Jensen's reply comments are in red.

Hi Tom,

I added a few comments below your comments. I appreciate your prompt response.

My comments have been added in red to your message.

Thanks,

Bob at rjensen@trinity.edu
Professor Robert E. Jensen http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-736-7347 Fax: 210-736-8134

-----Original Message-----

From: thomas frecka [SMTP:Thomas.J.Frecka.1@nd.edu]
Sent: Monday, February 15, 1999 9:30 AM
To: rjensen@trinity.edu
Subject: Notre Dame/E&Y M.S. in Accountancy Program

Bob,

Just read the stuff about the program on your web site. Thought I might set the record straight on a few points:

The program is for both undergraduate accounting majors and for non-accounting undergraduate business majors. The latter group will start with the Readiness Program. I don’t consider this very "controversial."

Comment from Bob Jensen:
It is controversial to the extent that some states require 21 to 24 credits of content that is traditionally covered at the undergraduate level. Since you only offer 10 undergraduate credts of undergradutate accounting content, I do not see how it will be possible for graduates of your program to meet the requirements to take the CPA examination in states like Texas.

The E&Y program is also controversial in that E&Y does not provide funding for this program for any of its employees at any colleges or universities other than Notre Dame and the University of Virginia. To my knowledge, other universities were not even given a chance to bid on this program. It might be noted that unlike the E&Y and PWC programs, all universities have a chance of receiving funding for the new KPMG program that funds a Masters of Taxation degree for employess in the tax division.

(2) Students will continue to consider employment at other firms. In order to receive "free" tuition, the E&Y students must remain with the firm for three years. If they leave, they will need to reimburse E&Y for the pro-rated cost of the program. I presume that many students will not want to incur this liability.

Comment from Bob Jensen:
Yes but the E&Y funded masters degree is a fringe benefit not being offered by any other firm as part of the plan to recruit undergraduate students. Other firms may have to join this band wagon just to compete for top students. Since most new hires hope to stay with a large public accounting firm for at least three years, the three year indenture is no big deal. I assume that if they are terminated by E&Y, their debt for the masters degree is waived. In reality, the E&Y Master Plan is one of the largest fringe benefits in the history of public accounting firms. For all practical purposes it is even more than a "free" masters degree.

One question that comes to mind is how this fringe will be taxed by the IRS? That will be a major bite not anticipated my many applicants. The tax implications should be mentioned in the E&Y application for the program.

(3) Both Notre Dame and UVA have signed a Letter of Understanding with E&Y. The agreement gives both schools complete control over the curriculum. In our case, it was important for us to have a curriculum that was exactly consistent with the requirements for our existing M.S.in Accountancy Degree Program. We also have complete control over admission decisions and students are expected to follow all of the Notre Dame rules.

Comment from Bob Jensen:
When I posted my earlier concerns, I thought you were constrained by the requirement in many states that students have 30 or more hours of accounting to sit for the CPA examination and particular accounting, auditing, tax, and systems courses. Now I realize that you are not constrained by this requirement. It appears that graduates from your M.S. in Accounting program will not be able to sit for the CPA examination unless they take more accounting courses other than accounting courses you require in the program and as prerequisites for the program.

(4) Distance learning courses will be taught by faculty at ND and UVA.

In our case, we have a great deal of experience with distance learning, particularly in our Executive Programs. In fact, our program won an award for best distance learning in higher education last year.

Comment from Bob Jensen:
I have never questioned the quality or integrity of the University of Notre Dame or UVA. These are very presitigious programs. I have featured the BAM program at UVA in a document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm . In my technology workshops I rate Notre Dame's business school faculty and building among the most advanced programs I know of in technology applications.

(5) Our program is not comprised of more accounting courses than competing programs. The program is designed to meet AACSB accreditation standards and 150 laws that limit the amount of accounting included in such programs. RE communication/speech courses, our program includes a required negotiations/communication course and a required consulting course. Re the CPA exam, our program should cover the requisite accounting material, but CPA review is E&Y/the participants’ responsibilities, not ours.

Thank you for this clarification. In my earlier concerns I thought that you were intending to make students eligible to sit for the CPA examination and would offer a more traditional masters of accounting program that had more accounting prerequisites and/or more accounting courses required in the program. Now I realize that your program is not intended to make students elgible to sit for the CPA examination in many states.

(6) There will be no undergraduate accounting material covered in the 30 credit hour degree program.

Comments from Bob Jensen:
This is both a strength and a weakness. It is tough to mix former accounting majors with non-accounting majors who have only had a five week Readiness Program.

I would appreciate it if you would correct the erroneous impressions conveyed by your article.

Comment from Bob Jensen:
I have added you message to the web document so that your concerns are fully stated in your own words. I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that you were trying to offer a curriculum that enables students to sit for the CPA examination in virtually all states.

The message came from
Tom Frecka
Director, M.S. in Accountancy Programs,
University of Notre Dame
February 15, 1999

Deere Contracts With Indiana University for Online MBA Degrees in Finance

"Deere & Company Turns to Indiana University's Kelley School of Business For Online MBA Degrees in Finance," Yahoo Press Release, October 8, 2001 --- http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/011008/cgm034_1.html

MOLINE, Ill., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Deere & Company, the world's leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment, has entered into a Web-based academic partnership with Indiana University's Kelley School of Business to provide a Master of Business Administration degree program for Deere's finance professionals, beginning in August 2002.

The customized online program is designed as a three-year course of study to be completed in parallel with the participants' full-time job responsibilities. Course content is centered around the business knowledge, technical skills, and behavioral competencies for Deere's future leaders to use in responding to challenges facing the company. Kelley's senior faculty designed the program specifically for John Deere, with input from the Deere finance division's senior management team.

``This is a rigorous program drawing from the strengths of both the Kelley School and the Deere management team. It is designed to create value for our enterprise and allow us to attract and retain high-quality employees,'' said Nate Jones, chief financial officer at Deere & Company. ``Graduates of this program will learn skills that help them better meet the challenges of improving business performance and delivering value to shareholders.''

``The Kelley School of Business takes pride in its ability to build curricula,'' said Dan Dalton, dean of the Kelley School. ``Our faculty's talent in educational innovation enables us to create close relationships with the corporate community and construct programs according to their specific criteria. We are delighted to extend this ability to include a corporation with the integrity and strong international reputation of John Deere.''

The MBA program curriculum will consist of twenty courses structured to meld individual student goals with the organizational needs of Deere & Company. Each academic year will consist of three twelve-week sessions. The program will be launched each year with a one- to two- week residential module on Indiana University's Bloomington campus.

Teaching tools will include discussion and debate forums, on-line testing, audio streaming and video streaming, simulations, and time-revealed scenarios for case-based learning. Course materials may be accessed directly from the Worldwide Web. The program will use only full-time tenure-track faculty recognized for their quality of teaching in other Kelley School programs.

The John Deere MBA program is a customized adaptation of the Kelley Direct Online MBA program, which is the first fully online MBA offered among nationally ranked top-20 business schools. It has been available since 1999 to qualified working professionals who continue their employment while earning their degrees. It was created in collaboration with the Kelley School's corporate executive education clients, who voiced a need for MBA skills throughout their work forces. About 150 students are enrolled in the Kelley Direct Online MBA program today.

Bob Jensen's threads on universities that have similar contracts with other universities are given at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Tools and Innovations in ALN Technologies

Before reading this you may want to visit the tools site at http://www.uwex.edu/disted/interactive.html

Also see Tools and Tricks of the Trade at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"Seven Problems of Online Group Learning (and Their Solutions)," by Tim S. Roberts and Joanne M. McInnerney, Faculty of Business and Informatics, Central Queensland University, Australia --- http://www.ifets.info/journals/10_4/22.pdf
Roberts, T. S., & McInnerney, J. M. (2007). Seven Problems of Online Group Learning (and Their Solutions). Educational Technology & Society, 10 (4), 257-268.

ABSTRACT
The benefits of online collaborative learning, sometimes referred to as CSCL (computer-supported collaborative learning) are compelling, but many instructors are loath to experiment with non-conventional methods of teaching and learning because of the perceived problems. This paper reviews the existing literature to present the seven most commonly reported such problems of online group learning, as identified by both researchers and practitioners, and offers practical solutions to each, in the hope that educators may be encouraged to “take the risk”.

Keywords
Online collaborative learning, CSCL, Group learning, Group work, Free riders

"Better Learning With Sites and Sound," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, December 3, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/03/audio

Students in four graduate courses at West Virginia University worked on and submitted group projects in two different ways, alternating for each assignment: using Microsoft Word to save, track changes, add comments and send files back and forth as e-mail attachments; and sharing files and editing them online using Buzzword. According to the study, the students “were more likely to use graphics, charts, links, etc. in Buzzword because of the ease of inclusion” than in Word, possibly as a function of the interface’s comparative ease of use.

Perhaps more significantly, the study found that they were “more likely to explain more complex concepts using a combination of text and non-text based materials. The majority of participants ... expressed the view that it was easier to express themselves at a higher cognitive level when they could present material using multiple media sources.” They also had higher levels of satisfaction.

Although the study had a small sample size, Ice suggested in an interview that the “multiple forms of sensory input” such as charts, links and graphics not only make the information more understandable to the reader “but apparently ... students are learning more from that process as well"; a process that’s not too different from the wiki editing experience. He is preparing a larger follow-up study with at least six different institutions around the world.

In theory, then, collaborations using Web-based editing tools can potentially boost understanding, at least visually.

But learning doesn’t just occur in the visual realm. Ice co-authored a study, currently under review, that examines how listening to spoken words while also reading at the same time can improve students’ learning experiences. In particular, he and his colleagues attempted a method in which professors record comments on students’ written assignments, which students can then listen to as they read along at corresponding points in the text. They can also record their own responses and continue back and forth in a sort of audio conversation.

While the Web-based collaboration tools are free, Ice’s method makes use of embedded audio features in Adobe Acrobat Pro. If institutions own the software, however, students can listen to the audio (and record their own additions) on the free and commonly used Acrobat Reader. (Adobe provided 60 copies of Acrobat Pro for the study but no additional funding or support.)

The forthcoming paper found that students in the audio study were at least three times more likely to take professors’ comments into account in their final assignments if they were in audio form as opposed to written. What they found, Ice said, was that “students are actually listening to the instructor and reading what they wrote so they have two sensory modes working at the same time,” which could actually improve cognition.

Since the paper was produced, Ice added, additional research has confirmed that the findings are generalizable over many different contexts, such as types of learners and types of institutions.

But a central component of the effect is what the authors call the “asynchronous audio feedback” aspect of the comments: that students can listen to previously recorded audio while they’re reading what it is referring to.

“I’ve tried other methods, too, where you send the students a document and then also send them a [separate] sound file, and the effect is not nearly as strong; as a matter of fact, it’s barely significant when you do that,” Ice said.

Continued in article

HTML slide shows on the tools of ALN technologies are provided at the University of Illinois web site http://talon.extramural.uiuc.edu/ws97/intro/tsld033.htm and http://talon.extramural.uiuc.edu/ws97/intro/sld033.htm

A Power Point presentation is available at http://www.online.uillinois.edu/oakley/presentations/CACUBO_Links.html

The tools mentioned by at the by Andrew Wadsworth at http://talon.extramural.uiuc.edu/ws97/intro/tsld033.htm include the following:

Print --- good ALN courses may not be entirely paperless. W. Crawford and M. Garnow state (as quoted by Eli Noam in Educom Review, March/April 1998, p. 18)

Print is not dead.
Print is not dying.
Print is not even vaguely ill.

Videotape --- this is still cheaper than storage and transmission of high volumes of digitized video, although random access, searching, and freezing on frames are huge limitations.

Audiotape --- this is still cheaper than storage and transmission of high volumes of digitized audio, although random access, searching, and freezing on frames are huge limitations.

Email --- email and the Internet comprise the core technologies of ALN communications. Cost, efficiency and ease of use have no equals to email and the Internet. The main drawback of email is that responding to email communication is labor intensive (humans still answer the messages) and there are no volume controls other than refusals to answer all or certain types of email messaging. WalMart, for example, naively installed a customer email answering service only to discover that the flow of message become a roaring stream that was overwhelming. Very few retail corporations openly respond to more than a small fraction of email messages. Many conceal email addresses of employees.

Voice Mail --- this can reach users and educators at times when they do not have access to computers.

Bulletin Board System (BBS) - the electronic version of a cork board with tacked messages. The electronic version, however, is easier to search and index.

Facsimile or FAX - with advances in email that allow for graphics, audio, and other file attachments, FAX technologies are losing out to modern email. However, for many organizations (such a Microsoft, Dell, etc.) cannot handle email traffic, so that sometimes the only way to transmit facsimiles is via FAX, postal services, or other express mail services.

Internet and the World Wide Web - email and the Internet comprise the core technologies of ALN communications. Cost, efficiency and ease of use have no equals to email and the Internet. A drawback of the world wide web, however, is flow capacity (bandwidth) that can make transmissions very slow. Also there are huge differences between being connected to arteries (e.g., T1 lines) versus capillaries (modems). Students on campus have tremendous comparative advantages if they can use arteries and avoid the capillaries to households outside the campus. Some advocates of ALN having great successes with ALN on campus may not have the same success with modem users.

To Wadsworth's list we might add some extensions of the above technologies.

Chat Lines --- these are actually technologies for supplementing asynchronous messaging (like email and the Internet) with synchronous messaging where students and faculty are assembled at the same point in time from various parts of the world to have synchronized communications. Older technologies include teleconferencing and video conferencing. Newer technologies include text, audio, and video conferencing via computer networks.

Real and Psuedo Audio/Video --- these are huge innovations for ALN. Downloadings of large audio/video files can be very time consuming and require computer capacity to handle the storage. The user is put on hold while audio or video files are being downloaded. Real audio/video commences to playback immediately without having to wait, and psuedo audio/video commences when only a portion (e.g., 10%) of a file has been downloaded. Real audio makes it possible to have radio broadcasts around the clock over the Internet, and these broadcasts can come from any part of the world. Examples of real audio application in courses along with the use of other ALN tools can be found in the Power Point slides at http://www.online.uillinois.edu/oakley/presentations/UIUC_ALS_Links.html

You can download a version of RealPlayer from http://www.real.com/ As an illustration, Paul Krause's streaming video Accounting Information Systems lectures are linked and explained at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/ideasmes.htm#Krause

One of the more innovative applications of real audio online is in Beth Ingram's macro economics course at the University of Iowa. The web address is http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/class/6e002/audio/index.html

You can read more about web streaming at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Web5

Wireless Communications --- portable computers can now be turned into cellular telephones such that students can communicate with faculty and each other with the flick of an antenna on the side of the computer. Email sending and receiving devices are now being (experimentally) installed in wrist watches. A good web site for remote control technolgies is at http://www.networkcomputing.com/909/909r2.html

Speech Recognition Software --- new technologies in this area allow for digitization of "normal" speech. Conversion of normal conversations greatly facilitates storage, search, and random access retrieval of all or portions of such conversations. You can read more about speech recognition technologies at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Speech1 .

Text to Audio Conversion Software --- this is the flip side of speech recognition. One of the most innovative web sites in the world is the Bell Labs web site that allow you to type in text and then choose how you want it read back. You can read more about audio conversion at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245glosf.htm#Text2 .

Interactive Graphics on the Networks --- this includes VRML allowing for 3-D images to be manipulated (resized, turned, scrolled, etc.) over the Internet. One of the best web sites for VRML is at the San Diego Super Computing Center at http://www.sdsc.edu/vrml/ At this site, my favorite demonstration service is the mathematica surface modelling utilitiy at http://www.tisny.com/vrml/math.html

Studio Classrooms --- these were pioneered by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Jack Wilson at http://www.rpi.edu/dept/science/www/Interactive_learning/classrooms.html Large lecture halls are replaced by "studios" where pairs or small groups of students learn interactively on computers. The emphasis is on asynchronous learning rather than synchronized presentations. More recent applications are summarized in "Teaching on the Web and the Studio Classroom," Syllabus, April 1998, 37-39. The Syllabus web site is at http://www.http://www.syllabus.com/

Probably more important than the tools are the clever ways in ALN for using these tools and the possibility for abusing the tools. For an analysis of these issues, please click on http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm#Tablebig experiments at the University of Illinois are discussed at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/

Once again I remind you to visit the tools site at http://www.uwex.edu/disted/interactive.html

MUD, MOO, and MUSH Extensions

A somewhat bolder extension of ALN pedagogy entails having students create their own avatars and learning worlds. MUDs are Multi-User Dimensions or Multiple User Dungeon, or Multiple User Dialogue. These are extensions of Dungeons and Dragons that seduced "adolescents" into a network world of imaginary places. Now there are serious social and education MUDs. Some of the many types of MUDs and MUDding are reviewed http://www.lysator.liu.se/mud/faq/faq1.html.

There are extensions such as Object-Oriented MOO applications that, along with MUDs, have become serious educational experiments and applications. For example, in Technological Horizons in Education THE (http://www.thejournal.com), March 1997, pp. 66-68, the Director of Information Resources (Michael Conlon) at the University of Florida reports on the MOOville writing workshop for over 2,500 students per semester at the University of Florida. A summary of the article is provided by Jensen and Sandlin at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm#Advantages5. An example of the network learning features of MOOville is by Conlon as follows:

When an instructor assigned a short play for students to read, instead of discussing it by talking face to face with each other, each group of students would go to its workspace in MOOville and conduct their discussions online. Students were not allowed to address each other verbally. At their workstations, students had to type in their ideas for other group members to read and respond to; they also had to respond in return.

The MOOville pedagogy has become exceedingly popular with University of Florida faculty and students. Dr. Conlon concludes the following:

To those who say that a subject as complicated as writing cannot be taught with computers, we say that it definitely can, especially when the computer becomes the gateway to an environment that draws students in and excites them about expressing themselves through writing.

Another less extreme extension is the MUSH which, like a MUD, is an electronic space in which multiple persons (players, users, students) socialize, create "worlds," and interact in gaming or serious episodes. For a discussion of the history and applications of MUSHes, see "The Mush Manual" by Lydia Leong at http://galaxy.neca.com/~soruk/manual.html. The variations differ more in terms of underlying software codes than in purpose and application.

Types of ALN Contracting

Costs of development of a virtual university are discussed by Murray Turhoff at http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/Papers/cbdevu.html The abstract reads as follows:

This paper is an update of one that the author published in 1982. It deals with the costs and effort required to set up a first class academic program for 2000 students that is made up of students and faculty scattered around the world. The establishment of such a University would cost less than the addition of a single classroom building on a physical college campus (approximately $15 million US).

There are of course many options as to scale and magnitude of effort. In terms of new courses at a university, the most expensive option is probably on-campus development of either a traditional or an ALN course internally. The alternative option is to contract for selected ALN courses from other developers (vendors). In some instances the price of importing a course may not be significant (e.g., when the course is developed using state funds with the proviso that other institutions in the state are to share in the results). In other instances, the price may be very high (e.g., where the vendor both develops and administers the ALN course).

Bill Graves discusses various "micro market" scenarios in "Adapting to the Emergence of Educational Micro Markets" in the September/October 1997 issue of Educom Review (pp. 26-31). Many universities will probably take on some form of the first scenario on Page 30 that reads as follows (emphasis added):

A traditional institution (college or university) can move selectively to offer online versions of existing courses and degree programs. This is already happening in many institutions in an ad hoc incremental manner that adds value to the institution’s core programs.

For example, adding an array of ALN business technology courses would add value to our existing core programs in Business Administration at Trinity University. ALN courses bridge key gaps in the core program. The second scenario, according to Dr. Graves, is to become a "meta" university like the University of Utah that is retaining its traditional market niche while exporting several networked courses to the new online Western Governors University. The third scenario is to become a "mega" university aggressively marketing world wide online degree programs.

Other examples of these ranging alternatives are provided in the Appendix of this paper. To skip to this Appendix, click on Appendix: Links to Some Key Web Sites.Appendix.

The Myth of Lower Faculty Cost: Network Bridges May Be Cheap Shots or Very Costly to Deliver

I indicated above that my colleagues are skeptical about contracting for any networked ALN courses even though some courses would greatly improve the curriculum at Trinity University. Their skepticism, however, may be for the wrong reasons. Some early studies of ALN at other universities indicate that ALN is more effective than traditional pedagogy. However, skepticism regarding labor intensity and need for high faculty dedication to ALN are well grounded.

Networked courses are cheaper than traditional courses due to virtual elimination of needs for physical classrooms, building maintenance, and expensive on-site faculty. They can be virtually paperless and administered with little or no contact between faculty and students. However, most respected universities are not considering the cheapest form of distributed education. Duke University forged ahead with its new and very expensive Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) networked, prestigious, and high tuition program described at http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/programs/gemba/index.htm.

In the October 20, 1997 issue of Business Week article on GEMBA, the title of the article is "THE HOTTEST CAMPUS ON THE INTERNET: Duke's pricey online B-school program is winning raves from students and rivals." By "pricey" the article means that the tuition alone is $82,500 for this online combination of synchronous and ALN modules. Although it may not be available for long on the web, at the time of this writing the Business Week article is available free at

http://www.businessweek.com/1997/42/b3549015.htm

The GEMBA Program at Duke University stresses increased rather than decreased communications between faculty and students and between students themselves via newer technologies for global online communication. Heavily featured in the GEMBA program are networked cases and chat lines between students who reside in virtually all parts of the globe. Component technologies used by GEMBA at present are as follows:

Voice over network synchronous discussions

Application-sharing software

CD-ROM multimedia course ware

E-mail

Electronic bulletin boards

Streaming audio

Synchronous group discussion software

World Wide Web browser

Internet based search engines, including Dialog, Dow Jones & ProQuest

Another leading edge program is the Ohio University Online MBA Without Boundries program at http://sirius.cba.ohiou.edu/www/intranet/#mbawb . My friend Thomas Calderon writes as follows:

Yesterday I visited Ohio University to take a look at their "MBA Without Boundaries" program. It was facinating. The program is offered on the web using Lotus Notes and Domino. It is a two-year, lock step program that is 100% project oriented. Students must complete a number of individual projects and about 8 major group projects. No text books are required or recommended. Six instructors team teach the program and they collaborate on every project. The entire program is a collaborative effort between students and faculty that is supported by a powerful web-enabled GDSS tool. The program is very selective and students pay a hefty fee.

By the way, thanks again for your contribution to Ohio AAA.

Thomas

___________________________________________________________

Thomas G. Calderon, Ph.D. Phone (330) 972-6099
Associate Professor Fax (330) 972-8597
G. W. Daverio School of Accountancy Mailto:TCalderon@Uakron.edu
College of Business Administration
The University of Akron
Akron, OH 44325-4802

Some of the top universities experimenting with network delivery of courses are finding that networking can be a victim of its own success. This is the purported experience of the ALN experiments in the College of Commerce and Business Administration at the University of Illinois under a relatively large grant from the Sloan Foundation. The unexpected huge cost arises from labor intensity of dealing with increased messaging of students in networked courses and the varying ALN styles needed for differing types of students. In the Sloan Foundation funded ALN courses, it was discovered that students normally reluctant to communicate in traditional classrooms and faculty offices suddenly want to write vast amounts in writing assignments and other messages in the Illinois ALN experimental courses. Teaching assistants had to be hired to assist faculty in dealing with the huge and somewhat unexpected volume of student messaging. It was also found that different types of students (Eager Beavers versus Drones versus Sluggos) need different types of ALN pedagogy.

The "urge to message" phenomenon among students will come as no surprise to major corporations such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and most other corporations that have very fine web sites but cannot afford the labor expenses of personally responding to email messages from customers and the public at large. Some companies like Wal-Mart for a short time encouraged their web site users to send in messages and, soon thereafter, drowned in a sea of messages. To stem the flood, typical options currently available at most corporate web sites are only to fill out standardized forms (that computers can process) and/or to limit email messaging to webmasters with suggestions for improving the web site. Although Dell Corporation has over $2 million in sales per day from web site order forms, a message sent to the only email address provided at the Dell web site reads as follows:

Please note, the webmaster@dell.com address is for communications regarding this website only. While all messages are read, we may not respond to or forward your message.

Note that corporations can limit 800-number phone messaging by simply setting the capacity for incoming telephone calls such that, when all lines are busy, the public must wait for an open phone line. Email messaging cannot be controlled with "busy signals." As a result, corporations either do not provide any email addresses at their web sites or they restrict the types of messages that will be answered. Some large and small business organizations have delayed extending 800-number type services to web services due to the anticipation of being swamped with use of the web services and the added messaging that will accompany the web services. Email addresses, unlike telephone numbers, of departments and divisions of major corporations are closely guarded secrets. Customers, students, and network users in general appear to "love to message" according to early experiments in web site administrators. FedEx is one of the rare exceptions to offer to personally respond to public messaging at http://www.fedex.com/email-form.html. Labor costs are enormous for having humans read and respond to email messages.

There are added costs that are noted in some of the grant reports filed with the Sloan Foundation. In particular, the Final Report from Stanford University is negative about current technologies for ALN courses and calls cost problems "problematic."

The problem of cost is problematic. As mentioned above, there is an expectation that asynchronously delivered courses will be less costly than synchronously delivered ones. To some extent this is a simple pricing issue. However, if we frame the issue as the need for the production, maintenance, and delivery costs of an asynchronous course to be less than that of either a live or televised class, we can make some observations. Our experience shows that the production and delivery costs of adequate quality multimedia content are high. In a situation such as that at Stanford, where classes are taught live and are also televised, asynchronous delivery is a direct cost overlay. Although live classes will continue into the foreseeable future, on-line synchronous delivery could supplant television should the quality of the two methods become comparable.

Executive Summary of the Final Report on Sloan Foundation Grant No. 94-12-7, March 4, 1997 http://pocari.stanford.edu/history/index.html

It should be noted that newer technology is now being installed at Stanford University that will improve upon both ALN and traditional courses. At the moment, Microsoft Corporation is leading the way in installing technologies at Stanford University that will put every Business Administration course on a network server. Even though Stanford has not yet announced plans to make these courses available to other campuses through its Stanford Online Program, it will not take much effort to do so when competition from other prestige universities makes it popular to join in the movement toward global networking of courses and/or entire degree programs.

Microsoft Corporation provides a recent online article by Dees Stallings entitled "Applying Taylor's Efficiencies in cyberspace." This article describes some ways to improve efficiencies of asynchronous courses. The article is at http://www.microsoft.com/education/hed/vision.htm

Also see Concerns About Faculty Resistance to Change

How to Reduce Messaging Costs in ALN Courses

The "cheap shot" way to reduce messaging costs is to virtually do away with messaging to course administrators by limiting messaging to only technical support in making the online or CD-ROM course work on a given computer. Most respected universities are understandably reluctant to take the cheap shot approach. Faculty themselves must be dedicated to a long-term ALN pedagogy. Several faculty at Drexel University who participated in a Sloan ALN grant warn that:

Institutions as a whole must also be committed to ALN-based education and training. If organizations regard the technology as a fad or as something in which they must become involved because of perceived competition, then they will not sustain ALNs as part of the primary delivery processes. The danger today is that asynchronous learning-along with other forms of "distance education"-will remain in the labs and in the hands of techno-educators-who seldom represent mainstream faculty interests.

Asynchronous Learning Networks: Drexel's Experience http://www.thejournal.com/past/oct/510andriole.html

A more respected way to lower messaging costs is to investigate why students need to have such frequent messaging with the course instructor or teaching assistants. Chances are that many of the messages arise because of deficiencies in the provided ALN materials. The deficiencies may be in terms of content or in terms of poor aids in navigating that content. In this regard, I have provided a checklist of things to consider when designing ALN learning materials. This checklist is available at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/ideasmm.htm. Good design will not eliminate messaging, but great designs might eliminate an enormous proportion of the messages. One problem that experimenters with ALN are having is that budgets and material preparation time are inadequate for creating great ALN content with creative navigation aids.

Another way to reduce messaging costs is to invest more heavily in developing "intelligent" ALN materials versus "one size fits all" materials. In U.S. Department of Defense courses, the distinction lies in computer based training (CBT) versus intelligent computer based training (ICBT). When the military develops ICBT, the material contains artificial intelligence utilities that adapt to the background, aptitude, and motivation of the learner. It was mentioned above that after experimenting with ALN courses at the University of Illinois, Professor Arvan discusses ALN in terms of students classified as "Eager Beavers" versus "Drones" versus "Sluggos." Virtually all universities contend that the majority of their students are Eager Beavers rather than Drones and Sluggos. Professor Arvan concludes that the proportion of actual Eager Beavers may be overstated and, in their cases, the need for labor intensive discourse is different but nevertheless significant:

I'd be remiss if I didn't say something about ALN and Eager Beavers before concluding. Though I believe there can be substantial benefit from utilizing ALN in a course primarily composed of Eager Beavers, that use should be substantially different from what I have outlined above, because the teaching objective is different. The main goal in the case of Eager Beavers is to promote high-quality discourse, rather than to offer a channel for getting help and to provide an incentive for doing the work.

From Lanny Arvan in the Department of Economics at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~larvan/ALNessays/ALN1.html

If the ALN materials contained artificial intelligence that identified the type of learner, it might be possible to reduce messaging costs by automatically varying the navigation options to learning styles and aptitudes. This will not eliminate discourse and other messaging costs, but it may take some of the drudgery out of messaging.

Components of ALN

Jack Wilson at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has had a great deal of experience in an ALN program at Rennsselaer. He states that a "good" ALN will have the following:

Delivery on standards-based multimedia PCs equipped for live video/audio interactions and connected to a robust IP multicasting network
A mix of synchronous and asynchronous activity
Use of Intranet and/or CD-ROM-based multimedia materials
Live audio and/or video interactions among the students and with faculty
Use of professional quality software tools for CAD, symbolic math, spreadsheets, word processing, etc.
Small group discussions
Question-and-answer tools to verify content retention
Collaborative software for application sharing and application synching over the network
Access to rich resources on the network
Floor control to allow classroom coordination for both instructor-led and student-centered learning
Course administration to track student progress and to identify the students during the synchronous interactions

Jack M. Wilson
"Just-in-Time Training: Distance Learning on the Desktop"
Syllabus, September 1997, p. 52

Small group discussions can be carried on in chat lines or some type of email setup such as a listserv. Professor Wilson also argues that good ALN courses will still have both instructor-led and student-led learning in addition to pre-recorded ALN learning materials.

http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/255light.htm

Components of SLN

Online courses need not be ALN. Indeed many of them are mainly synchronous learning network (SLN) courses with small amounts of asynchronous ALN material. Most SLN courses in the past and present are taught with interactive television. A few courses are now SLN via the Internet.

A highlight for me at the November 6-7, 1998 AICPA Accounting Educators Conference was a presentation by Sharon Lightner from San Diego State University and Linard Nadig from Switzerland. This presentation followed a ceremony presenting Professors Lightner and Nadig with the $1,000 AICPA Collaboration Award prize. The Collaboration Award was given for an online course that is now offered to a class comprised of five students from each of six universities in the United States, Japan, Switzerland, Spain, and Hong Kong. I videotaped the presentation by Professor Lightner and Nadig and will now share my summary of the highlights of this innovative international accounting course. The summary highlights and links can be found at

The course has some highly innovative features including the online participation of accounting standard setting bodies in the various countries mentioned above. The course is also innovative in that students in class and in team projects see and hear one another over the Internet in a manner much like they would see and hear each other if they were all in the same classroom. The course has one instructor from each of the campuses.

The components of a SLN course include servers, cameras attached to each client compujter, real audio software, real video software, and software for chat lines, file transfers, etc. An example of software components and a discussion of possible problems is given at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/255light.htm#TechnologySoftware

A good example of an entire online degree program that is heavily a SLN program is the Duke University Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) program described at http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/255wp.htm#TheMyth

Will Higher Education Adopt Business Strategies?

In On the Horizon, July/August 1997, D.P. Snyder lists the following business strategies that loom on the horizon for higher education following the lead of postindustrial enterprises:

Insourcing and outsourcing

Collaborative in-house initiatives and teamwork

Intrapreneurship and extrapreneurship

Distribution channeling

He suggests that these will be translated to the following education strategies:

Modular core curriculum packaging

Licensing certified franchising

Distributed teams

Distance learning

Virtual classroms

Collegial colloborations

Colleges and universities have been slow to adopt business strategies that are fueling the postindustrial revolution. One reason is that educational institutions have thrived on regional monopolies and/or the halo of hallowed tradition. In the 21st Century, however, networking technologies will gnaw away at traditional comparative advantages. As competition for students becomes more intense, colleges and universities will experiment more and more with business strategies of the late 20th Century.

ALN vs Self-Directed Learning (SDL)

ALN and self-directed learning (SDL) had different origins. SDL is an older term that evolved from continuing (adult) education, correspondence courses, and corporate training. SDL existed before computer networking whereas ALN implicitly assumes computer networking and/or CD-ROM hypertext and hypermedia. However, SDL applications have moved quickly to computer networks and CD-ROMs with hypertext and hypermedia. Few, if any, differences remain between SDL and ALN.

One difference of note is that SDL usually depicts a self-paced learner struggling alone with the learning materials and occasional messaging with a trainer or instructor. ALN typically makes use of more recent collaborative technologies of chat lines, listservs, and webcasting. In addition, ALN in a college setting is rarely totally asynchronous. Usually there are synchronous elements that possibly include classroom lectures and case discussions.

SDL has become a "quiet revolution" in corporate training according to Guglielmino and Murdick:

There has been a "quiet revolution" going on in the training departments of some of corporate America's most prestigious companies. For example, a series of national seminars were conducted by the International Quality & Productivity Center on Self-Directed Learning during the past three years. Companies such as Motorola, Disney, Aetna, Xerox, U.S. West, Levi Strauss, Owens-Corning, and American Airlines have all been implementing SDL in their long-term training and development strategies. These companies have discovered an educational practice that has its roots in the Socratic method. It is called self-directed learning. Organizational and technological changes have forced companies to re-examine the way employees learn and what they learn.

The storage time of an individual's knowledge from acquisition to use has shrunk because employees must use the latest knowledge available to keep companies at the edge of the competition. In essence, we have entered the age of "just-in-time learning." This type of learning has been discovered to be self-directed learning. It is the only approach possible for keeping learning in sync with the rapidly changing environment. The nature and advantages of this method of learning as well as successful applications will be presented in the following sections.

P.J. Guglielmino and R.G. Murdick
"Sel-Directed Learning: The Quiet Revolution
SAM Advanced Management Journal
Summer 1997, p. 10

Comparisons of SDL with traditional training is always risky. Hawthorne effects become major problems in experimental designs. These are distortions and possibly non-sustaining effects of a treatment just because its newness captures more of an individual's attentiveness. In double blind studies of the impact of technologies upon learning, Hawthorne effects are particularly troublesome. Students are apt to be more attentive to newer technologies simply because they are "new" curiosities. Positive results on learning impacts may not be sustaining, however, after the novelty and curiosity factors decline with repeated use of the technology over time.

Be that as it may, there are repeated reports of successes of SDL in both reduced cost and improved performance in training. An example is provided in a Motorola Corporation plant as follows:

In 1994, 633 associates undertook 853 self-study courses. This represented over 3,000 hours of SDL training in just four months. In 1995, 1,920 learning plans were completed, resulting in 4,080 self-study hours, or 40% of the total course offerings. Approximately 50% of the associates selected a self-study course to learn what they needed. The average cost per hour for delivering the traditional classroom instruction was $13.34, while the average for delivering the self-directed material was $7.76. It is interesting to note that the results of the learning indicate the self-direct approach proved as good as, or better than, the traditional learning method. Recently, Motorola Paging Division has made a commitment to extend this SDL approach to all of its sites worldwide.

P.J. Guglielmino and R.G. Murdick
"Sel-Directed Learning: The Quiet Revolution
SAM Advanced Management Journal
Summer 1997, p. 13

This type of SDL was not undertaken with the instruction labor intensity of the ALN experiments on university campuses under Sloan Foundation grants. Cost savings may not be as dramatic in ALN. Also, without instructional labor intensity, SDL may not be as effective with college students as it is with highly motivated adult employees seeking promotions and job performance evaluations.

A Comment Regarding Intranet versus Internet Courses

Before closing this document, I would like to make a comment about Internet courses. An "Internet" course is any course that makes use of the Internet (usually by means of http protocols on the World Wide Web). The transmitted materials may be selected materials or entire courses.

An "intranet" is any network that has some type of restricted access to materials (web pages, images, audio files, video files, animation files, databases, etc) on the Internet. The common access restriction is a password that in the case of online course materials must be purchased. One type of intranet is formed when a textbook publisher restricts access to only users who have paid for the right to open an online textbook. For example, see textbook listing at Cybertext Publishing (http://www.cybertext.com/). The University of Pheonix uses similar intranets for course material access at http://www.uophx.edu/online/. An example of a student's experience at taking an online course is provided by CyberSchool at http://CyberSchool.4j.lane.edu/About/CSClass/CSClass.html.

In many instances, course materials used by faculty are shared freely with the world without intranet restrictions. Example links to free shareware are shown below:

http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu:80/world/lecture/
http://WWW.Trinity.edu/~rjensen/
http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finman540/classnotes/notes.html
http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/cases/casebk2.html
http://Finance.Wat.ch/cbt/Options/
http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu
http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/bookbob.htm#Top1

Once again it is stressed that ALN courses my have online learning materials that make a course heavily asynchronous, but the "complete" course will most likely be improved with some synchronous components such as traditional classroom meetings, distance learning "classrooms" such as with interactive TV connections, audio conferencing, video conferening, chat lines, etc.

Judith Boettcher describes the range of "Web-light" to "Web courses" possibilities as follows:

I think it is useful to describe some of the characteristics for courses using these new technologies. It is also useful, I think, not to think in terms of either-or but to think in terms of online/Web courses/Internet courses as points on a continuum. Some of the courses might be described, for example, as "Web-light," while other courses are truly "Web courses" in that they are delivered fully on the Web and are accessible anytime and anywhere.

Communicating in the Tower of WWWeb-ble
by Judith V. Boettcher
Syllabus, October 1997, p. 44

Concerns About the Explosion of ALN in Education

Concerns About Residency Living & Learning on Campus

I recently listened to an address by Robert S. Sullivan, Directory of the IC² Institute, University of Texas at Austin. He was extremely positive about opportunities for ALN networking and bridging of curriculum gaps with web courses that in many instances will become much higher in quality than a single university will normally be able to develop only for its own campus. At the end of his address, in response to a question from the audience, he did raise two very serious concerns (that I paraphrased below from my videotape of his remarks):

Problem 1: One day a "university" may only be left with onsite faculty and programs that distributed education vendors are not willing to "pay for." There is an important debate going on that focuses on the issue of whether the "university concept" might be undermined.

Problem 2: Students, especially undergraduate students, cannot have a complete learning experience without being physically present on a campus. The interpersonal and social dynamics of a campus may be put at risk with distributed learning.

Robert S. Sullivan, August 20, 1997 Plenary Session
Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association

Concerns About Impersonality and Becoming Irrevocably Orwellian

One of my students, Elizabeth Eudy, coined the phrase "irrevocably Orwellian." At http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/eeudy/aln.htm she writes the following:

Although it is too far fetched to say that we will turn into cold, heartless robots as a result of ALN and that our society has become irrevocably Orwellian, the lack of face-to-face social interaction could potentially do more harm than good in our education. Will graduates of ALN degree programs be left wondering how they will cope in an actual job interview? Students need social interaction as vital component sof maturation and professional development. The most successful use of ALN thus presents itself as a combination of online courses and real classroom interaction. The classes do not necessarily have to meet twice or three times a weeks as most do now, but rather as needed by the demands of students or by the judgement of the professor. In any case, as the market for ALN courses expands (as it is doing) traditional universities will have to upgrade their curriculum to ALN in order to remain competitive.

At a later point she writes the following:

ALN courses can be dehumanized to such an extent that students will no longer feel as if they belong to a learning community. Community is a key concept for the learning process, and enables students to gain support from each other. This concept is taken to the limit in traditional universities where students belong to a university community--they live in the dorms, they eat together at the cafeteria, they join various student organizatons, and most importantly, they learn together. The professors and students ideally belong to the same community of learning; although in some universities students feel that professors are too inaccessible. Many proponents of ALN still agree that the human component of education and university life is necessary. Degerhan Usleul, the chief operating officer of Interactive Learning International Corporation (ILINC), is quoted as saying: The importance of an instructor's physical presence, complete with body language, as well as the rapport one builds with classmates, are not easily replaced. Jo Ann Davy continues in the article, writing that Usluel recommends holding a physical event to help relationships, before connecting online.
Davy, Jo Ann. "Education and Training Alternatives." Managing Office Technology: Cleveland. April 1998.

Another student named Katie Lawrence lists drawbacks of ALN as follows at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~alawrenc/ALN.html

There are more dropouts than in actual on-campus courses

Loss of commuinty/campus atmosphere

There are no current standards for program assessment, so it is difficult for students to know which courses will be worth the money they are spending

Often, the high fees charged for some ALN courses go to fund actual campus courses rather than the virtual courses being offered.

Due to the large number of students taking ALN courses and their tendency to contact professors frequently, more professors or teaching assistants are required to adequately teach a cyber course.

"Learning ceases to be about analysis, discussion, and examination, and becomes a product to be bought and sold, to be packaged, advertised, and marketed." (taken from Dangers of Global Education)

Students loose out by not actually reading published books.

Because the courses are developed in the Western world, Western views are spread to all parts of the globe, which may inhibit the cultural growth of other societies, thus creating a unified, undiverse world. Computer access and availability and modem speed are problems for ALN courses given on college campuses - students are often times unable to log on due to slow modems or busy network lines.

Barbara Brown discusses the myth of asynchronous learning impersonality:

Another myth one frequently encounters about computer-mediated instruction is that of impersonality. People assume that in the absence of face-to-face interaction, relations automatically become more distant and impersonal. Traditional distance learning formats are said to be plagued with this problem.[9] Not so, in my experience with the interactive digital classroom. There is a type of intimacy achievable between teachers and students in this medium that is quite extraordinary, reminiscent of what Sproull and Keisler refer to as "second-level" social effects of the technology. I believe this intimacy results from a sense of shared control and esponsibility, commitment to collaboration and dialogue, and increased willingness to take risks in communications with others nline. The verbal and writing-intensive nature of the text-based forum network also forces one to make one’s thoughts very explicit whenever possible; there is little room for subtlety. As one administrator put it: "In an online environment, words matter.... Words are everything."

Also, it takes longer for groups to reach consensus in brain-storming and problem-solving situations online.[10] People’s feelings can be hurt easily, so more time and effort are put into explaining meanings and supplying detailed contextual background to enhance mutual understanding. Thus, writers get to know one another intimately over time while computer-mediated conversations - both formal and informal - unfold. Neither e-mail nor chat, the forum classroom environment at Fielding calls for and inspires thoughtful, composed (after reading and reflection) asynchronous networked interactions, without sacrificing human warmth.

At this stage in the evolution of Internet educational technology, we are all learners. There is also a sense that we are innovators and early adopters who "crossed over" early in the technology transfer and diffusion process.[11] In the Fielding culture, this pioneer experience has come to be known as riding the waves, or embracing the "turbulence" of rough seas - a metaphor for global and organizational unrest as well. The attention given to group process online and the thoughtful nature of master’s-level conversations establish an intimacy within the group, belying the myth of impersonality.

B.M. Brown
"Digital Classrooms: Some Myths About Developing New Educational Programs Using the Internet,"
T.H.E. Journal, December 98, pp. 57-58
The online version is at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/current/feat04.html

Click Here to View Working Paper 265 on Metacognition
Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training:
Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?

Concerns About Making Education and Training Too Easy

It has been demonstrated in various ways in cognitive and learning science that making a training environment easier may be dysfunctional in the sense that it improves short term memory at the expense of long-term memory and performance. Complex information needs to be multiply encoded in semantic and/or situational associations. Computer-aided training may either enhance or detract from long-term performance.

For example, I am inclined to make it easier for students to find answers or get leads each course topic. I view it as taking the Mickey Mouse drudgeries of finding things that consume time. I hope to provide my students with more time to study what they find and less time trying to find what they study. To do so I provide as much literature as possible on CD-ROMs (many of which I record myself), my LAN hard drive, and the University's web server. However, it is possible that the Mickey Mouse activities contribute significantly to long-term memory. To the extent that I am making discovery less difficult and more predictable, I might in fact be improving students' short term performance at the expense of long-term memory and cognition.

Robert Bjork states:

It has now been demonstrated in a variety of ways, and with a variety of motor, verbal, and problem-solving tasks, that introducing variation and/or unpredictability in the training environment causes difficulty for the learner but enhances long-term performance --- particularly the ability to transfer training to novel but related task environments.

Robert A. Bjork
"Memory and Metamemory considerations in the Training of Human Beings,"
Metacognition: Knowing about Knowing
Edited by Janet Metcalfe and Arthru P. Shimaura
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
ISBN: 0262132982, 1994, Page 189

Other references are provided later on in this document under the section entitled "Fostering Deeper Learning: Risks of Teaching More Than You Know."

.

Bob Jensen's Other Documents

Glossaries

Education Chapter 2

Metacognition

Table of Contents

Concerns About Making Education and Training Too Hard

All courses at Trinity University are three-credit courses. Virtually all of my students are full-time students who are taking at least five courses each semester. On the faculty evaluation forms one of the questions reads: "How would you rate the workload of this course?" Another question reads: "How difficult did you find this course?" As I added more ALN modules in place of lectures, answers to these questions virtually all moved to "Very Heavy" and "Very Difficult." The following quotation is representative of class concerns:

The work load was very heavy and put a strain on my other classes. I liked the material, but weekly quizzes and examinations plus 50-90 pages of reading per class along with other classes is too much.

Actually I usually do not assign pages to read, but in the process of studying assigned topics, my graduate students dig out a huge amount of material that they themselves feel they must study. In research projects constituting over 50% of the course grade, they must seek out, sift, digest, and nurture a vast amount of learning material. Often students must spend a great deal of time building foundations to even study the material. For example, projects entailing both design and implementation of relational datatbases entail learning how to make complicated software work. Projects entailing how to account for financial instruments derivatives entail learning what those financing contracts are and how they are used in hedging stragegies.

The bottom line is that it is would not be reasonable for all five graduate courses each semester to take as much time as my courses. Students would become frustrated, angered, and seek to somehow short circuit their effort if there was not enough time each week to cover five similar ALN courses. Their traditional lecture courses are often neat and tidy with problems assigned from the back of the textbook and sufficient material in the textbook or lectures to master the assigned materials. Students all study the same materials and can help each other in many lecture courses. In my asynchronous modules, students must do a lot more digging on their own and generally come away frustrated by the "loose ends" that they neither have the time nor skills to master nor the skills to master. For example, in the process of studying risk exposures of derivatives contracts they encounter mathematically complex Value at Risk time series models. A few of the mathematically inclined students who elect to delve into such models learn more about Value at Risk than students who go down other avenues on their projects. Hence, students are not all studying the same materials, and it becomes more difficult to lean on each other for help crossing troubled waters. In many instances their instructor, me, is not sufficiently up on the particulars of each topic to bail them out. For more on this, skip to the section entitled Fostering Deeper Learning: Risks of Teaching More Than You Know.

I like to force students to struggle on their own, because I think this prepares them for life after graduation. However, there is a fine line in ALN between making ALN too easy versus making ALN too hard. I have not yet achieved the correct balance. One example where asynchronous learning appears to achieve a good balance is the Business Activity Model (BAM) in Intermediate Accounting at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. A portion of one of my recent email messages is quoted below:

The mere fact that many ALN courses are shown to improve grades and/or the rate at which learning takes place does not imply that long-term performance has been enhanced. It is not clear whether better performance arises from a confounding of added sweat with ALNs. What does intrigue me, however, is how an entire year of Intermediate Accounting (typically very tough courses requiring memorization of lots of accounting rules and procedures) is now being taught at the University of Virginia totally without lectures by the two professors (Croll and Catanach) who, up until 1996, lectured (quite brilliantly) in virtually every class. Their anecdotal claims for the "BAM" non-lecture approach are that students are doing markedly better on in course examinations, the CPA examination, and on the job (which they can monitor since all students have internships with firms). I now feature a multimedia workshop module of the University of Virginia BAM ALN program. The average SAT of students in these UVA classes is over 1300. It is not clear that BAM will work so well on lesser mortals.

One way to judge good ALN workload balance is to keep track of teaching evaluations. Students generally voice complaints when workloads are unreasonable (they will not always complain when a course is too easy). The BAM asynchronous courses at the University of Virginia have heavy workloads, but Professors Croll and Catanach manage to pull these courses off with some of the highest instructor evaluations in the McIntire School of Commerce.

Click Here to View More Discussion of the BAM Pedagogy at the University of Virginia
Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training:
Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?

Bob Jensen's Other Documents

Glossaries

Education Chapter 2

Metacognition

Table of Contents

Concerns About Corporate Influences on Traditional Missions

There are two types of partnerings between business firms and universities. The first type is where the university's faculty deliver a specialized degree program to employess of a business firm. The program is often specialized calendar, courses, and mode of delivery. For example, the PriceWaterhouse Coopers MBA program at the University of Georgia has a customized calendar, customized courses, and all courses are delivered asynchronously on the web.

Another type of partnering is where the business firms deliver courses for the university degree programs. An example of this type of partnering is the AT&T partnering with Western Governors University that was announced in two magazines that I track regularly. For example, see

"AT&T Learning Network Hosts WGU Content," T.H.E. Journal, February 1999, 14-16.

One of my undergraduate students, Paul Meekey, notes the rise of partnerships between universities and corporations where the universities participate in educating and training employees of companies. Paul's paper can be found at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/pmeekey/frame2.htm wherein he states the following:

Employers are always trying to find ways to cut costs and now with the introduction of ALN,
they should be able to do so. Two companies that have enabled this technology are helping to reduce costs in their post graduate business training programs. CIGNA Corporation, an
insurance company located in Philadelphia has formed a partnership with Drexell University, also in Philadelphia to create a master's program for information systems. They came up with a three year program that would train their students online. The only time they actually met offline was for a two day orientation at the Drexell campus and after that it was totally online. After the success of the program, Metlife, another insurancecompany decided to form a similar partnership with Drexel University. One advantage to this program that both company enjoyed was that both companies didn't have to give up their employees to go back to a university campus for the 2 yr. graduate program.

The employees could remain working for the company, continue working on their projects and fulfill their educational requirements after work, before work, on their days off, or on the weekends. Richard H. Lytle, dean of Drexel's College of Information and Technology, says that the he is really excited that both companies are not only using his program but applying it to software application within their own applications of everyday work. The program helps the companies to eliminate the some costs and uncertainties of trying to hire full-qualified employees from major universities and also the time lost when employees have to go to these classes during normal working hours. The companies are also using what they have learned through Drexel University to eventually have all training in the company done through ALN, in all departments. New York University's School of Continuing Education also participates in online learning, and just recently formed a partnership with IBM to offer information systems courses for their professionals, on a global scale. We are sure to see a huge increase in ALN used in the business environment. Companies can keep their employees working hard and earning the profits while training them to make them more efficient at their job. Although still young, ALN is helping companies such as Citicorp, NYNEX Corp., and Sandoz to become more cost efficient in training their employees.

The above trends are a mixed blessing. Clearly, expansion into corporate education and training expands the market alternatives for colleges facing a shrinking and increasingly competitive environment for traditional students and traditional continuing education students. The flip side of the coin is that the universities may sacrifice some of their independence in setting curricula and course contents since corporations paying for the education and training will dictate such matters to a large degree.

For more discussion and references about corporate universities and partnerships between corporations and traditional universities, see http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#CorporatePartnerships and http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#ErnstandYoung .

Concerns About Library Services

The Internet has become the world's library. However, content pales in comparison with scholarly works found in libraries that contain vast resources that either are not or cannot be digitized. Making centuries of literature available on networks is cost prohibitive to digitize for and deliver from web servers. Copyright restrictions deliberately protect vast bodies of new and older literature from being digitized.

When asynchrounous courses are delivered off campus, library access becomes a major problem that is frequently ignored in the hype of ALN promotion. One of my students, Katie Greene, addresses this problem at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/kgreene/distanceno.htm

In the above document, Katie provides links and references to literature on looming issues and "new roles for librarians." She states:

Librarians must change their role if they want to keep up with the changes in education. They will need to change in three different ways. The first way would be that "librarians will take on a more proactive role in the classroom and will work more collaboratively with the teaching faculty to develop assignments that are feasible in the off-campus/ distance environment." (Lebowitz) Secondly, distance education will bring about "greater collaboration among institutions". (Lebowitz) Because their are no constraints on location, libraries from all over can work together to create collections of works and pool their resources. A good example of this cooperation, is Western Governors University, which is a university made by the governors of the western states. Along with this cooperation, though, "the supplying of library services will become highly competitive, and libraries may choose to outsource the provision of services to other institutions" (Cavanagh). Thirdly, the librarian's role "will shift to one of facilitator/instructor, rather than provider of information." (Slade) Librarians will now be communicating with students in remote locations via e-mail, video conferencing, chat lines, or audio conferencing. One example of this is at University of Maryland University College where students can "chat" with librarians online and ask any questions they might have. Librarians will have to be proactive and learn about the new technologies and make the materials available to students all over the world.

Many have already used these devices and made the information available. Old ways included loan programs and mailing books and other materials. Now librarians use information technology to develop online, virtual libraries. One criticism is that distant students do not have access to as much information, but librarians are now able to put entire works, full texts of books, journals, references, newspapers, as well as web searches and internet access on the internet.

Some Examples include:

VIVA the virtual library of Virginia - electronic collections of books, journals, newspapers , as well as internet searches.

Online Literature Library

Internet Public Library- references, magazines, newspapers, online texts.

Carrie-Full-Text Electronic Library.

Katie Greene raises other concerns and discusses the challenges of giving distance learners the same access to libraries as the access available to resident students. One wonders how top programs such as the Duke University Global Executive MBA program and the Ohio University Online MBA Without Boundries program manage to provide library resources to students.

Judy Luther provides a paper entitled "Distance Learning and the Digital Library: What Happens When the Virtural Student Needs to Use the Virtual Library in a Virtual University," Educom Review, July/August 1998, 23-26. Although no virtual library is going to contain the text of all books and journals in a major academic library due to copyright and impracticalities of digitizing trillions of pages of text and graphics, there are some collaborative efforts being made by various universities to aid students taking virutal courses off campus. At the time a am writing this paper, Judy Luther's article is not yet available online, However, eventually it will be online at http://www.educom.edu/web/pubs/review/dateIndex.html .

Concerns About Academic Standards and Student Ethics

One of my students, Sophia Mena, at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/smena/learning.htm wrote the following:

The first thing that came to mind when I first started researching the Virtual Classroom is how professors monitor if students are doing their own work. In the Traditional Classroom a professor can easily detect if a person is cheating on their test, but how can they monitor that if someone is taking a test by way of a computer? It seems very easy for someone to cheat in an asynchronous learning environment. To find out more about computer ethics you can visit:

Computer Ethics - Cyberethics:
http://www.siu.edu/departments/coba/mgmt/iswnet/isethics/index.htm

IEEE Code of Ethics: http://www.ieee.org/committee/ethics

In the 1900s it was common for students to take tests in the presence of the village vicar who then certified that all conditions placed upon taking an examination were followed. Some conditions are easily met with existing technologies such as timing the examination and webcams and microphones that allow the examiners to view and hear the student from most any distance around the world. Newer technologies such as retinal scanners are emerging to verifiy that the student taking the examination is truly the student who is authorized to take the examination.

Nevertheless, there are enormous problems with ethics and academic standards in ALN. For example, monitoring students on chat lines becomes expensive and intrusive. Most ALN courses assume that the email messages and chat line messages from a student are genuine without monitoring those messages with the same scrutiny that is given to course examinations.

In some ways investigating suspected plagiarism is easier on the web. Unhappily, I have discovered several instances where my students lifted parts of their work (in two cases the entire paper) from sources that were not cited. Finding these instances of plagiarism was much easier in their web documents due to the ability to search for suspected phrases in web search engines.

Plagiarism has always been and will always be a problem in education and research. The problem is exacerbated by computing technologies due to the ease of selecting all or part of a document and clicking on (Edit, Copy) and (Edit, Paste). Culprits do not even have to type the text. If they cleverly use the technologies, phrases can be easily modified so it becomes more difficult to discover that the passage was first lifted and then modified so as to escape detection.

One problem with emerging speech recognition technologies is that spoken words (e.g., in a lecture or a session at a conference) can be recorded and digitized automatically such that text that has never appeared in print is created by speech recognition software. How easy it becomes to beat the speaker in putting that speaker's presentation into printed text. Faculty clinging to traditional lectures and classroom case discussions may not even be aware that whatever went on in their classrooms is now available at hidden sites on the web at either a public or a private web site. Those infamous "fraternity files" have never been so rich as they will become with speech recognition technologies.

Concerns About Faculty Efficiency and Burnout

Online education is now part of "fabric" of public universities, a new study finds. But teaching on the Web is a lot of work, and professors are not happy about lack of support from administrators.
"Going For Distance," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, August 31, 2009 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/31/survey

Online education is no longer a peripheral phenomenon at public universities, but many academic administrators are still treating it that way.

So says a comprehensive study released today by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) and the Sloan National Commission on Online Learning, which gathered survey responses from more than 10,700 faculty members and 231 interviews with administrators, professors, and students at APLU institutions.

“I think it’s a call to action,” said Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts and chair of the Sloan online learning commission. “The leadership of universities has been trying to understand exactly how [online education] fits into their strategic plans, and what this shows is that faculty are ahead of the institutions in these online goals.”

According to the study, professors are open to teaching online courses (defined in the study as courses where at least 80 percent of the course is administered on the Web), but do not believe they are receiving adequate support from their bosses. On the whole, respondents to the faculty survey rated public universities “below average” in seven of eight categories related to online education, including support for online course development and delivery, protection of intellectual property, incentives for developing and delivering online courses, and consideration of online teaching activity in promotion and tenure decisions.

Still, more than a third of the faculty respondents had developed and taught an online course.

“The urban legend out there was that many faculty out there don’t want to participate” in online education, said Wilson. “Contrary to popular myths, faculty at all ages and levels are participating.”

Indeed, neither seniority nor tenure status held a significant bearing on whether a professor had ever developed or taught an online course. At the time the survey was administered, there were more professors with at least 20 years’ experience teaching an online course than professors with five years’ experience or less.

This despite the fact that developing and teaching a course online is more taxing than doing the same in a classroom -- according to the survey respondents, teaching online isn’t easy. “Faculty who get involved in online teaching have to be more reflective about their teaching,” Wilson said. Professors need to organize lecture notes and other materials with more care. They get more feedback from students. It’s more apparent when a student is falling behind and needs special attention.

Almost two-thirds of the faculty said it takes more effort to teach a course online than in a classroom, while 85 percent said more effort is required to develop one. While younger professors seem to have an easier time teaching online than older ones, more than half of respondents from the youngest faculty group agreed it was more time-consuming. Nearly 70 percent of all professors cited the extra effort necessary to develop Web courses as a crucial barrier to teaching online.

So if teaching an online course is a ton of work and support from administrators is lacking, why bother doing it? Most professors said they are motivated by their students’ need for flexible access to course materials, and a belief that the Web allows them to reach certain types of student more effectively.

“As a faculty member, when you’re teaching online, suddenly you have to be teaching 24/7,” said Samuel Smith, president emeritus of Washington State University. “…It’s more difficult, but the students get more contact.”

Given the extra work, more than 60 percent of faculty see inadequate compensation as a barrier to the further development of online courses. “If these rates of participation among faculty are going to continue to grow, institutions will have do a better job acknowledging the additional time and effort on the part of the faculty member,” said Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group and the study’s lead researcher. For some, that might mean that their online work should figure into tenure and promotion decisions. For others, “acknowledgment” might equate to some extra cash in their paycheck.

This is not a new request -- nor is the fact that it takes longer to develop and administer a college course online a new revelation. The American Federation of Teachers report on guidelines for good practice in distance education acknowledges that it takes “anywhere from 66 to 500 percent longer” to prepare an online course than a face-to-face one, and “additional compensation should be provided to faculty to meet the extensive time commitments of distance education.” The report noted that only half of the faculty it surveyed reported receiving extra compensation. That was in 2000.

The authors of today's APLU study conclude by recommending that public universities not only institute policies that “acknowledge and recognize” professors’ online education efforts, but also work develop “mechanisms that effectively incorporate online learning into the fabric and missions of the institutions.”

“It’s now a factual statement that online learning is woven into the fabric of higher education,” Wilson said. “It has grown faster over the last six years than any other sector of higher education … and it will keep growing.”

Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Barbara Brown wrote the following:

There are many myths and tacit assumptions about computer-mediated learning that can be explored in the Fielding context. Much has been written about technological efficiency and the potential of the Internet as an educational medium to save time and money or increase productivity. The author’s experience inspires a healthy skepticism in this regard. Having taught students in conventional classrooms for two decades, I experienced the computer-mediated mode of instruction as more time-consuming, at least initially, both from the standpoint of up-front course design and later, painstaking, labor intensive hours online - designing messages for the classroom forum, reading and downloading from the screen, posting new material, providing feedback, checking community bulletin boards, e-mailing student comments and grade reports, etc. In fact, there were many times when I felt torn between my real life and my virtual life on-screen, in an identity challenging " Turkle [Turkle, Sherry (1995), Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.] sort of way, simply because there did not seem to exist enough hours in the day to do justice to both. This was the case even in an "asynchronous" environment where I had the flexibility to conduct electronic office hours in my bathrobe over morning coffee or post feedback in the dead of night.

Moreover, absent face-to-face contact and ordinary non-verbal clues, even very mature students on the Internet demand more frequent interaction and reassurance in dialogue with their professors, an observation confirmed in student course evaluations. Students demand more feedback; and the more feedback they receive, the more interaction they want. There are at least two possible interpretations of this phenomenon: One is that it reflects the way students compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction. Or, it may be that this medium disinhibits student communication, thereby stimulating the message exchange process. As the intellectual excitement of these conversations grows, so does the amount of interactivity in the virtual community.[See Rafaeli, Sheizaf and Fay Sudweeks (1998), "Interactivity in the Nets," in Network & Net Play: Virtual Groups on the Internet,
Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press/The MIT Press]

I estimate this mode of instruction requires roughly 40% to 50% more work on the teacher’s part in comparison with conventional classroom delivery. For example, where I might put approximately 36 hours of work per week routinely into a regular course load with a total of 120 students in four traditional class sections at a large public university, online instruction at Fielding required 50 hours or more per week - with only 24 students in just three sections of my digital classes. It also takes longer for faculty members and administrators to reach consensus in electronic group meetings.

B.M. Brown
"Digital Classrooms: Some Myths About Developing New Educational Programs Using the Internet,"
T.H.E. Journal, December 98, p. 57
The online version is at http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/current/feat04.html

Also see Concerns About Faculty Resistance to Change

Concerns About Misleading and Fraudulent Web Sites

An emerging area of interest to me is the rate at which marginal and fraudulent asynchronous courses and programs are emerging. For example, I consider it shame when someone other than a major university uses a domain name of that university. One of my students, Elizabeth Eudy, wrote the following at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/eeudy/aln.htm

I may be mistaken in the specific case, but the person in Reykjavik, Iceland who owns the domain name CarnegieMellon.com seems well positioned to offer services in a way that just might be confused with services offered by a well known U.S. university. Hundreds of examples exist of domain names that seem purposely designed to be misleading...Two problems stem from this: First, there is no way for the typical user to know whether the actual location of an Internet site is in, say, Pittsburgh or Reykjavik. Second, these sites are not under any single legal jurisdiction. The FBI, for instance, probably has little clout in Reykjavik

Click Here to View Working Paper 265 on Metacognition
Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training:
Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?

Concerns About CyberPsychology

The accelerating pace of networking for education, entertainment, research, therapy, and commerce is having profound psychological impacts on society. IFOBITS in May 1998 made the following announcement about a new CyberPsychology journal:

CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR is a new, peer-reviewed journal for the mental health community devoted to the "impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality on behavior and society." Articles in its inaugural issue include "The Gender Gap in Internet Use," "Internet Addiction on Campus," "The Relationship Between Depression and Internet Addiction," and "A Review of Virtual Reality as a Psychotherapeutic Tool."

Cyberpsychology & Behavior [ISSN: 1094-9313] is published quarterly by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2 Madison Avenue, Larchmont, NY 10538; tel:

914-834-3100; fax: 914-834-3582; email: info@liebertpub.com; Web:

http://www.liebertpub.com/

Concerns About Computer Services and Network Reliability

This morning I went to one of our student labs to check to see if one of my new ToolBooks was being transported properly on the Internet. I discovered that someone had wiped out both the Internet Explorer and the Netscape Communicator web browsers on the first three lab computers that I logged into. It is terribly frustrating for faculty and students to repeatedly encounter hardware and software failures. Student frustrations center around not having enough lab computers, wasting time on lab computers that fail, having their own computers crash during the semester, and encountering network crashes or delays due to clogged bandwidth.

An enormous problem for universities who engage more and more in ALN courses that rely daily upon networking systems is to keep those systems efficient and reliable for students. Faculty members occasionally miss class due to illness or scheduling conflicts, but faculty miss class much less often than computers crash on most campuses. In addition, there are disruptions due to necessary maintenance and updating of computer systems. Few, if any, campuses have budgets to provide backup systems for disruptions of service.

There are increasing risks of security failures on campus computers. Geeks hack or crack their way into systems on every college campus. In most instances they do so without intent to cause great harm. However, they may also be intent upon bringing down the system or parts thereof. Equipping divisions (e.g., a College of Business within the university) with their own servers, labs, and computing maintenance centers reduces the risks of university-wide computer system failure, but the cost becomes enormous in terms of hardware and personnel costs. However, this may also spread technician talent so thin across the campus that the risk of poor performance in some divisions may be increased.

There are no easy solutions to the problem that ALN learning is absolutely dependent on reliability of computers and networking systems.

Concerns About Effectiveness of Learning Technologies in Large Classes

Email messages from Roger Debreceny and Andrew Priest

I do not doubt for a minute that small group, f2f teaching can be highly effective. I sure hope so, because like many of the people on this list, I have devoted many hours of my life to the pursuit of better f2f small group teaching! <g>.

As regards large group f2f teaching, I am much less sanguine. I lecture to a group of 750 students (!!) in one large (ok, it’s enormous!) lecture theatre. There are clearly some benefits to such large group teaching (mostly sociological) but not many. In most cases, large group lectures are poorly presented, inadequately planned and almost completely lacking in challenges to the students. Large group lectures lead, in my view, to the "I attend, therefore I learn" syndrome. We all know that all the evidence points to the inability of humans to concentrate in such environments for more than a few minutes at a time. Yet we consistently ignore such evidence.

There are many problems, however, with both small group and large group f2f teaching and learning processes. Key amongst them is the idea that we engender in our students, that they can go to a sage and receive knowledge in some structured fashion. Contrast that with our research processes. OK, we do have research tutorials (e.g. at the AAA Annual Meeting), but they are relatively rare. Research is undertaken by search for, and integration of, knowledge. Research is much, much more like the real work world that our graduates will experience than the f2f classroom.

Where networked technology can assist us is to change the teaching and learning model from sage/pupil towards research leader/co-researcher.

We should listen more to the ideas of thinkers such as Schank (see, for example, a short article by Schank in the July issue of Communications of the ACM).

Now, just as an example of a colleague who has made some interesting advances in using networked technologies to move from pedagogy more towards androgogy here is a write-up on Mark Freeman at University of Technology, Sydney that was recently posted to ATeach-L by Andrew Priest. We can get a flavour of a new learning environment.

Roger Debreceny

=============================

Hi Folks

Thought this article from the Business Review Weekly http://www.brw.com.au may be of interest.

Regards Andrew Priest

Mass lectures, often repeated, are the usual way that university business courses cope with cost pressures and student loads. Students are bored to tears by them. Mark Freeman, a senior lecturer in finance at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and a specialist in teaching methods, thinks he has found a better way: using the Internet. "The groundswell of student interest in Web-based learning is like no other phenomenon I have seen in educational innovation," he says, after tests involving more than 2000 students.

At 4 am students can have lively interchanges on the site.

Business students make up 30% of the enrolment at UTS but their courses get only 15% of total UTS funding. Freeman felt an obligation to make learning better for students who are struggling to hold down a job or cope with English, pay fees, mind children and resist fatigue at night. They may travel to university and find there are 30-40 students in a tutorial. Or part-timers might visit reserved sections of the library, only to find that desperate students have torn out the pages of a book or stolen it altogether.

Freeman began Internet-based teaching in 1996 with 800 students on a basic Internet system. Last year UTS brought in experimentally a special on-line teacher-student pack called TopClass for messages and conferences, involving 1000 students. This year 10,500 students, nearly half the UTS student population of 23,000, are using it. In one class of 100 last month, Freeman found that every student had private Internet access.

Some academics misuse the medium by merely posting their lectures on the Web, he says. This is no better than telling students that information is in the library and "go get it".

One of Freeman’s examples of "new learning" is an on-line role-playing exercise this year for post-graduate students of securities markets law. They take the identity of people such as John Howard, Allan Fels, or securities regulators, with their real identities staying secret until the program ends. The program was based on a method used at Macquarie University in a simulation of Middle-Eastern politics.

In the first week the students describe their roles; then crises are provided, such as a currency slump, bank failure or misleading prospectus for a privatisation. Students must research how their character would react, and type responses to the central on-line site. The "prime minister" can even negotiate privately with the "stock exchange chairman", as occurs in the real world. Freeman is the only observer able to read the messages. Since each student researches a unique situation, cheating is difficult. In normal work, cheating is a serious problem, now that vast amounts of material can be cut and pasted into assignments or lifted from "cheat sites" on the Web.

In team debates, groups take positions on issues such as corporate law reform, and hone their responses in private conferences before posting them on the Internet. Many students in their professional lives are already feeling the effect of corporate law reform, and have strong opinions. Even at 4am there can be lively interchanges among six students using the site.

Freeman says: "Students get completely immersed in the role playing. In addition they do not have the hang-ups often suffered by people in face-to-face arguments, such as deferring to those of the opposite sex or those perceived to be higher in status. Shy people are not argued down, rhetorical flourishes can’t be used, and non-English students cope better with the language."

Later there is a coming-out session at the university where the students show their real identities, often to surprise and applause. The debate is also a permanent and expandable record useful for future students. "The best part is that the students are not learning just what I tell them, but learning to think and make choices based on good information." An individual assignment is to investigate and give an assessment of a domestic and international securities regulator’s Web site, and present the results to a discussion forum.

Freeman admits to having the usual failures of a pioneer. "Technology in teaching can operate like an unguided missile unless the goals are well specified, such as changing student understanding," he says.

There is less staff administrative work because the Web is used for announcements, such as where to lodge assignments, errors in a text, changes to deadlines, and guides to marking. Staff have to discourage students from calling by phone and private e-mail, instead of logging on to the site.

But there is still a huge workload in the Internet-posted queries. Some students at other universities became irate when Freeman failed to respond to their queries. Students expect staff to respond seven days a week, and mark faster. Now, without the Internet, the requests would be totally unmanageable. "I used to get 40 calls on my voice-mail before I even started work. This morning I had none," Freeman says. He predicts that in the coming decade, some universities will fail, especially those that have chased short-term economies at the expense of quality. Students are already exercising their consumer rights and demanding "just-in-time" learning, rather than conforming to university teaching schedules. University teachers failing to get average grades of "highly satisfactory" would be sacked, since students would no longer tolerate mediocrity and would take their "business" elsewhere.

Freeman predicted six months ago that many universities would become user-pays systems where for $1000, for example, students could use a bare minimum of the facilities, and pay $100 each for a menu of add-ons such as on-line self-study material, videos and discussion groups. Replies within 24 hours would be guaranteed seven days a week, with a ceiling of ten sessions per subject and $100 per chat thereafter. There could be a $500 premium service involving time with experts face-to-face, on-line or in video-conference. "In the US, user-pays universities have already arrived," Freeman says. "It’s no longer a prediction."—

Andrew Priest, School of Accounting, Edith Cowan University
Mailto:a.priest@cowan.edu.au Mailto:apriest@imstressed.com
http://www.bs.ac.cowan.edu.au/acctinfoplus/
"Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"- SteveWright

Concerns About Faculty Resistance to Change

Probably the major stumbling block to education change is faculty unwillingness to venture into technology and new learning experiments. Instead of leading the way, faculty in traditional schools and colleges are behind corporate and military/goverment trainers in adapting to technologies and learning experimentation.

A funny thing happened to a campus event designed to bring our faculty together to exchange information and demonstrations of technology in the classroom. In the three years since the conference was launched, we have had steadily fewer faculty attending.

We surveyed our faculty to find out why attendance had declined at our on-campus technology conference (scheduled during a day when classes were not in session). Results indicated that while some faculty and staff did have a disinterest in technology, more often the problem was their frustration with it. Among reasons for why they were not using technology in their work, they cited lack of the following: training, support, space, equipment, and knowledge of what was available and how items could be obtained.

"Where Are They?": Why Technology Education for Teachers Can Be So Difficult"
by Claudia Rebaza
http://www.microsoft.com/education/hed/vision.htm

Although the barriers mentioned above by Dr. Rebaza are serious, in my viewpoint they tend to be excuses rather than reasons in many instances. Far more serious are the lack of credit given to technology innovations in promotion, pay-raise, publication, and tenure decisions. In fact, I maintain messages of selected "daring professor" who are willing to take chances in adverse environments. The web address is http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm

Some email correspondence from a faculty member at Trinity University is provided below:

From: [Name Deleted]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 1998 12:40 PM
To: rjensen@trinity.edu
Subject: Web projects

Dear Bob,

Thanks for sending along your web assignment and its rationale. I’m interested in doing a book-length project that has web links to my own set of materials and exercises. Or even doing the whole book in this way.

Question is, does one receive academic credit for producing work on the internet? Have you ever discussed this with the Administration?

Thanks,

[Name of the Trinity University Faculty Member Deleted]

========================================================================

Reply from Bob Jensen

Hi ______

One problem with web publishing is that if you submit your stuff to a top journal, the editor wants you to hide your research from the world until the journal gets around to publishing your work (which in a recent case took five years "in press" for an accepted Jensen and Sandlin article to finally get published). I recently had another paper accepted for publication. Then I had a long ‘fight" with the editor over whether I can keep a "live" and ever-changing version of the essence of that paper at my web site.

I have discussed web publishing with administrators is many universities. They have not and cannot take much of an official position without action by the faculty. Matters of promotion and tenure are pretty well decided all along the way (departmental faculty, Chair, Dean, and P&T faculty) with rare administrative reversals of recommendations. Faculty bring individual biases into peer evaluation, and at the moment web publishing is a new thing to most of them. Until the peer evaluation culture is changed, web publishing will not count heavily toward promotion, tenure, or take home pay.

The main issue is that web publishing is not refereed with the same rigor (as refereeing in leading journals) or, in most cases, is not refereed at all. This is a concern since it is pretty easy to disguise garbage as treasure at a web site. Leading journals will one day offer refereeing services for web publishing and may, in fact, do away with their hard copy editions. Until then what do we do? Most certainly we do not put up a web counter and brag about the number of hits --- Playboy probably gets more hits per day than all professors combined.

Somewhat of a substitute for hard core refereeing is a record of correspondence that is received from scholars and students who use your web documents. This lacks the anonymity of the refereeing process. Also there are opportunities to cheat (I’ll lavishly praise your work if you will adore mine in a succession of email messages), but most scholars have more integrity than to organize that sort of conspiracy. If you have a file of correspondence from people that your peers know and respect, chances are that your peers will take notice. Include copies of this correspondence in your performance reports. But this process is more anecdotal than the genuine blind refereeing process.

Until a rigorous web refereeing process is established, those who must evaluate a web publisher must do more work. They must study your web materials and make their own judgments regarding quality and relevance. It is much easier to simply tick off the refereed hits (For when the binary scorer comes to write against your name, he writes only ones or zeros, to him the unread articles are all the same). It is easy to become too cynical about the refereeing process. We have all had frustrations with bad referees, including acceptances of our weaker output and rejections of our best work. At my web site, I have section for my "big ones that got away." See http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/#BigOnes Refereeing is a little like democracy --- it ain’t perfect, but until a better system comes along it beats the alternatives over the long haul.

My trouble, and I suspect that Mike Kearl has the same problem, is that web publishing is addictive. The responses that you get from around the world set "your tail wagging." I have published many papers and several books (a sign of my advanced age), but I have never had the "action" following hard copy publication that I get from web publication. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that more people than you can imagine stumble on your web documents while using a search engine on the web. Not all of them send you nice messages, but a message recently received by me last week from a total stranger is reproduced be low:

==================================================================

Dr. Jensen,

Wanted to say thanks for maintaining your Technological Glossary page. I

am currently studying for my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer exams. Your page has been a god-send.

Pacificare,Network Associate II
Al Janetsky
Microsoft Certified Professional

Messages like the above message "keep my tail wagging." I even like the messages that signal items to be corrected --- at least those users found my stuff worth correcting. If you have audio on your computer, you can listen to Mike Kearl discuss what makes his "tail wag." Mike also discusses the issue that you raised in your message to me. The web address for Mike’s audio on this is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm . That particular article is entitled "Daring Professors" and contains audio and email messages from other faculty members who were willing to take some chances with their careers.

I can offer you a wagging tail and small pay raises if you rely entirely on web publishing as evidence of scholarship. Old hounds like me can opt for more tail wagging, but young pups need more nourishment shoved into the other end. (Actually I still publish hard copy to maintain respectability, but I personally am far more proud of my "living" web research documents than my annual refereed "dead" hits over the past few years).

Until the evaluation culture is changed in peers who hold you on leash, try to do web publishing alongside your refereed journal publishing. But don’t let the tail wag the dog or you will wind up in the dog house. If your book or journal editor objects to having your working documents published at your web site, remember who your master is at all times. His title is Editor in Chief!

An interesting paper by William H. Geoghegan at IBM Academic Consulting is entitled "WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY?" discusses some of the issues as to why the faculty are not yet adapting to education technologies. Estimates run as high as 95% of higher education faculty are not using these technologies. Geoghegan analyses social and diffusion barriers in particular. The paper is at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/links/library/geoghegan/wpi.html

Bob Jensen
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity.University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-736-7347 Fax: 210-736-8134

Also see Concerns About Faculty Resistance to Change

Concerns About Attrition and Drop Out Rates from Online Courses

August 31, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

REDUCING ATTRITION IN ONLINE CLASSES

"Attrition rates for classes taught through distance education are 10- 20% higher than classes taught in a face-to-face setting. . . . Finding ways to decrease attrition in distance education classes and programs is critical both from an economical and quality viewpoint. High attrition rates have a negative economic impact on universities."

In "Strategies to Engage Online Students and Reduce Attrition Rates" (THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATORS ONLINE, vol. 4, no. 2, July 2007), the authors provide a review of the literature to determine methods for "engaging students with the goals of enhancing the learning process and reducing attrition rates." Their research identified four major strategies:

-- student integration and engagement

Includes "faculty-initiated contact via phone calls, pre-course orientations, informal online chats, and online student services."

-- learner-centered approach

Faculty "need to get to know their students and assess each student's pre-existing knowledge, cultural perspectives, and comfort level with technology."

-- learning communities

"[S]trong feelings of community may not only increase persistence in courses, but may also increase the flow of information among all learners, availability of support, commitment to group goals, cooperation among members and satisfaction with group efforts."

-- accessibility to online student services.

Services might include "assessments, educational counseling, administrative process such as registration, technical support, study skills assistance, career counseling, library services, students' rights and responsibilities, and governance."

The paper, written by Lorraine M. Angelino, Frankie Keels Williams, and Deborah Natvig, is available at http://www.thejeo.com/Volume4Number2/Angelino Final.pdf.

The Journal of Educators Online (JEO) [ISSN 1547-500X ]is an online, double-blind, refereed journal by and for instructors, administrators, policy-makers, staff, students, and those interested in the development, delivery, and management of online courses in the Arts, Business, Education, Engineering, Medicine, and Sciences. For more information, contact JEO, 500 University Drive, Dothan, Alabama 36303 USA; tel: 334-983-6556, ext. 1-356; fax: 334-983-6322; Web: http://www.thejeo.com/ .

Jensen Comment
Attrition rates are high because online students are often adults with heavy commitments to family and jobs. Initially they think they are going to have time for a course, but then the course becomes too demanding and/or unexpected things happen in their lives such as computer crashes, a change in job demands (such as more travel), family illness, marital troubles, etc. Sometimes online students initially believe the myth that online courses are easier than onsite courses and, therefore, take less time. About the only time saved is the logistical time waster of commuting to and from a classroom site.

"How to Be an Online Student and Survive in the Attempt," by Maria José Viñas, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 11, 2008 --- Click Here

The lives of many online college students are not easy. They have to combine jobs, house chores, family life and, on top of all that, do some actual studying. To help online students cope with this burden, a blog sponsored by Western Governors University offers survival tips.

The Online Student Survival Guide, a program that kicked off in May, is meant to give online students tips on adjusting to online learning and staying motivated throughout the courses, while balancing life and school. Following the famous Latin maxim “mens sana in corpore sano”, the bloggers also write posts on healthy eating—not only for the online students, but for their families, too.

Once again, the link to the Survival Guide is http://onlinestudentsurvival.com/

The Dark Side of Education Technology and Online Learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education are at the following sites:

Other Concerns

One of my students, Joshua Miller, lists the following concerns:

may require students to have "technological literacy" (I think this a
good thing but some of the sites I visited said otherwise)

content may become subservient to the technology

poses new difficulties for program evaluation and accreditation

could alienate academics

may encounter language barriers/translation problems

can be obstructed by time zones

requires forms of institutional support to be projected to distant
students

is complex in relation to copyright issues

often requires establishment of regional centers

can be costly for students to obtain equipment

A Message from Peter Kenyon on November 18, 1999

My own experience is with a three-semester experiment of a non-majors "survey" course. We met as a class once at the beginning of the semester and once again at the final exam. Without presuming that my experience can be generalized to others, I've made the following observations.

It was MUCH more work to prepare and execute the course than I ever expected. I covered a little less material than in the traditional course. Assessment was very difficult. Student reaction was strong and about equally divided between those who loved it and those who hated it. DL seems better suited to mature learners with well-developed learning skills.

In the end, I concluded their was little for me to like about this mode of instruction. It takes away the part of my job I like best (classroom interaction) and substituted mass quantities of gizmo tweaking (GT). Improved tools will reduce the need for GT, but I don't see how we maintain interesting human interaction. I use gizmos to support traditional instruction, but I have no desire to give up the classroom.

As Barry Rice says, the traditional classroom MAY be a dinosaur in need of extinction. But when it does, I'll find other work to do because there's little joy for me as a cyber-prof.

Peter Kenyon [pbk1@AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU ]

The most frequent refrain that I hear from my wife is: "Did you hear what I just said?" I am sorry to say that I often must ask Erika to repeat both that question and the her comments preceding the question. In fact, my penchant for listening without hearing has become somewhat of a joke between us. She has threatened to learn about computers just to communicate with me. Her problem is that she is just too busy to learn about computers. When she does find the time, however, I'm in for big trouble. Seriously, however, when I am in the midst of concentrating on one thing, I have a bit of the same problem with student communications on other issues.

I agree with Peter and Ron to a point. However, the Sloan Foundation Experiments suggest that faculty/student and student/student communications increase with asynchronous courses. Students who rarely take the trouble to visit faculty during office hours will send email and chat room communications. Students have a penchant for catching us in our offices at a bad time, and they become embarrassed that it is a bad time. The trouble is that, being so busy, there is rarely a really good time for us to really communicate face-to-face. Sometimes students have to wait outside our offices, and being human, they conclude that they have better things to do with their time --- such as seeking out a teaching assistant or another student in the class. I sometimes think my "former" students know be better, via email, after graduation than while they were my students. Perhaps it is because they learn to appreciate my work more after they have graduated. But I am certain there is more to it than that.

I taught in five universities over the years and encountered a few, surprisingly few, professors who have great face-to-face encounters with students outside the classroom. There are many (like me) who seem to do better with electronic communications. Years ago, I encountered an assistant professor from a prestigious university who reported that the only way for faculty or students to really make contact (before email was invented) with one of the superstars on the faculty was through written memos even though that superstar was located two doors down the hall.

For more on the relation between communications and pedagogy, see http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/slide01.htm. For more on student evaluations, see the course evaluations at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois. What seems to be more of a problem with asynchronous courses seems to be faculty burn out that, in large measure, is caused by increased communications with students. Asynchronous courses are also more demanding on materials development. Much of what we expound in lectures comes from long-term memory that is triggered by something (patterns of association) in the midst of class. Beforehand, the same thoughts may not have surfaced in our offices that surface in the middle of a class. This makes it almost impossible to write down down complete lectures for asynchronous courses having no lectures.

Electronic communications, of course, are not as satisfactory in many respects as face-to-face encounters. However, I would argue that electronic communications are sometimes "closer." For example, there are times when I feel a bit intimidated myself in the presence of some people that I communicate freely with by email. There are people that I hate to interrupt with a telephone call, but I am rarely embarrassed to send them email messages. After a face-to-face or telephone visit, there are almost always things that I belatedly think that I should have said or not said. This seems to be less of a problem with email, and when it happens I just send out correction/addendum messages.

My point here is to avoid associating "closeness" with "face-to-face." We can be virtual strangers face-to-face and close friends over a network. We may repeat daily greetings with colleagues in the hallways who we rarely communicate with in depth. I am less close with colleagues that I "see" in our hallways than with many of you with whom I correspond regularly. There have been some studies (one was reported in Playboy) showing that husbands and wives that see each other every day have a surprisingly small amount of genuine communication except at certain peak moments such as when they are in a car together on a long trip or awaiting a meal by candlelight in a slow-service restaurant. Would some us learn more about our spouses and kids if we communicated anonymously or openly with them via email and chat rooms? Will our kids open up more to anonymous strangers on the web than they will face-to-face with us.

But then maybe I am just "listening" to Peter and Ron without "hearing."

Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen

-----Original Message-----
From: Ron [mailto:rrtidd@MTU.EDU]
ent: Friday, November 19, 1999 6:55 AM
To: AECM@VAX.LOYOLA.EDU
ubject: Re: Distance Learning with traditional undergraduate students

Peter made one comment that I suspect reflects the sentiments of many 20th century educators- any technology that detracts from our ability to physically connect with our students is going to diminish our career satisfaction. While I share this sentiment whole heartedly, I believe that we confront two inescapable realities in 21st century education.

First, distributed education (whether distance or proximity) is going to become a more prominent feature of the academic landscape. Second, students are going to become increasingly comfortable with online social interaction and communities.

Given those two "assumptions," most (if not all) educators must learn how to develop an appropriate classroom community in cyberspace. To me, that means having a community that fulfills all participants' needs to connect, while achieving academic objectives. A difficult challenge when the participants come from two generations that define connecting and community in such different ways.

I have not had a chance to read it, yet, but some might find "Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace," (Palloff and Pratt) to be informative.

Ron Tidd

Student Evaluations and Learning Styles

Performance Evaluations and Program Assessments

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

There is an enormous problem of assuming that students who wrote high evaluations of any course actually learned more than high performing students who hated the course. Happiness and learning are two different things.

Reasons why students often prefer online courses may have little or nothing to do with actual learning. At the University of North Texas where students can sometimes choose between an onsite or an online section of a course, some student just preferred to be able to take a course in their pajamas --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#NorthTexas
Some off-campus students prefer to avoid the hassle and time consumed driving to campus and spending a huge amount of time searching for parking. Some Mexico City students claim that they can save over five hours a day in commuting time, which is time made free for studying (Jim Parnell, Texas A&M, in partnership with Monterrey Tech, deliver an ALN Web MBA Program in Mexico City) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

In general, comparisons of onsite versus online test and grade performance will tend to show "no differences" among good students, because good students learn the material under varying circumstances. Differences are more noteworthy weaker students or students who tend to drop courses, but there is a huge instructor effect that is difficult to factor out of such studies. For more on this, go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Online Learning Styles

Here are a few links of possible interest with regard to student evaluations and online learning styles. In some cases you may have to contact to presenters to get copies of their papers.

Probably the best place to start is with the Journal of Asynchronous Learning --- http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/index.asp

For example, one of the archived articles is entitled “"Identifying Student Attitudes and Learning Styles in Distance Education" in the September 2001 edition --- http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/v5n2_valenta.asp

Three opinion types were identified in this study: Students who identified with issues of Time and Structure in Learning, Social Interaction in Learning, and Convenience in Learning. These opinions can be used to aid educators in reaching their students and increasing the effectiveness of their online courses. At UIC, this insight had direct application to the evolution of course materials. Early application of technology merely supplied a web site on which were posted syllabus, readings and assignments. No opportunity existed for conferencing; thus, there existed no opportunity for social learning. In a subsequent semester, conferencing software was made available to the class, in addition to the website. Thus, the opportunity was added for social learning. The faculty learned, however, that every time a new technology was added, it experienced an increase in the level of effort necessary to support the student. Ultimately, the University made available a course management system, which significantly streamlined the effort on the part of faculty to make course materials available to the student. The system provides through a single URL the student's access to course materials, discussion forums, virtual groups and chat, testing, grades, and electronic communication.

This study is qualitative and confined to University of Illinois at Chicago graduate and undergraduate students. The three opinion types identified through this study, however, correlate closely with results reported in the literature. All three groups of students, representing the three opinion types, shared a belief in the importance of being able to work at home. The studies of Richards and Ridley [9] and Hiltz [10] described flexibility and convenience as both reasons students enrolled in online courses and as the perception of students once enrolled. On the other hand, all three groups of students thought unimportant the need to pay home phone bills incurred in online education, whereas Bee [13] found that students felt the university should provide financial assistance to offset the associated costs of going online. There is evidence in the literature (viz., studies by Guernsey [8] and Larson [18]) that support the opinion identified in this study of the need by some students for face-to-face interaction. Since none of the students taking the Q-sort had ever taken an online course, they were unaware of the opportunities provided by technology [8,10] to potentially increase individual attention from instructors above that normal in face-to-face course offerings. Since no post-enrollment Q-sorts were administered, there was no way to tell whether students continued to hold that opinion, or whether that opinion has changed. It is anticipated that even if the Q-set were administered to a larger number of students, similar viewpoints would still emerge.

The authors wondered whether there was an association between the opinion set held by the student and his or her learning style. Preliminary data using the Canfield Learning Styles Inventory [27] show that the factor one group--Time and Structure in Learning--exhibited a much higher than expected proportion of independent learners. (74% of the students who had high factor loadings on factor one were also classified as independent learners. This difference was significant Z = 3.00, p < .025.) One might be tempted to hypothesize a relationship between being an independent learner and having the time and structure opinion of technology and education. Similarly, one might also expect that individuals who had high factor loadings for factor two (Social Factors in Learning) would be more likely classified as social learners. Further research is necessary to understand how learning styles contribute to the experience of online education.

There is a movement in both education and business to harness the power of the World Wide Web to disseminate information. Educators and researchers, aware of this technological paradigm shift, must become invested in understanding the interactions of students and computing. The field of human-computer interface design, as applied to interaction of students in online courses, is ripe for research in the area of building better virtual learning communities (thus addressing the needs of the social learner) without overwhelming the ability of the independent learner to excel on his or her own.

Learning and Teaching Styles (Australia) --- http://library.trinity.wa.edu.au/teaching/styles.htm

Online Learning Styles --- http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/dvclearn.htm

Adapting a Course to Different Learning Styles --- http://www.glue.umd.edu/~jpaol/ASA/

FasTrak Consulting --- http://www.fastrak-consulting.co.uk/tactix/features/lngstyle/style04.htm

VARK Questionnaire --- http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

Selected professors --- http://online.sfsu.edu/~bjblecha/cai/cais00.htm

JCU Study Skills --- http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/learningst/

Cross-Cultural Considerations --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/cultures/culture.htm

"How Do People Learn," Sloan-C Review, February 2004 --- 
http://www.aln.org/publications/view/v3n2/coverv3n2.htm

Like some of the other well known cognitive and affective taxonomies, the Kolb figure illustrates a range of interrelated learning activities and styles beneficial to novices and experts. Designed to emphasize reflection on learners’ experiences, and progressive conceptualization and active experimentation, this kind of environment is congruent with the aim of lifelong learning. Randy Garrison points out that:

From a content perspective, the key is not to inundate students with information. The first responsibility of the teacher or content expert is to identify the central idea and have students reflect upon and share their conceptions. Students need to be hooked on a big idea if learners are to be motivated to be reflective and self-directed in constructing meaning. Inundating learners with information is discouraging and is not consistent with higher order learning . . . Inappropriate assessment and excessive information will seriously undermine reflection and the effectiveness of asynchronous learning.

Reflection on a big question is amplified when it enters collaborative inquiry, as multiple styles and approaches interact to respond to the challenge and create solutions. In How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, John Bransford and colleagues describe a legacy cycle for collaborative inquiry, depicted in a figure by Vanderbilt University researchers (see image, lower left).

Continued in the article

Bob Jensen has some related (oft neglected) comments about learning at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

The Noteworthy Success of Variable Speed Video at BYU

Learning Basic Financial Accounting at Brigham Young University (BYU) From Homegrown Videos
Developer and Instructor: Norman Nemrow [nemrow@byu.edu]
Title of Package of Eight CDs: Introduction to Accounting: The Language of Business
Textbook: I think this package can be used along with virtually any basic accounting textbook
Pedagogy: Students learn from video lesson modules before each class. The video lessons display
                  the course instructor in video as well as accompanying PowerPoint displays that are auto-
                  matically sequenced with the video. Students have nifty options to both replay the previous
                  five minutes and to play the videos a double (2x) speed that is an outstanding option
                  for reviewing previously-learned material.
Classes: Classes are more inspirational than perspirational (e.g., frequent use of visiting speakers)
Outcomes: Purportedly students perform better vis-à-vis previous lecture pedagogy without video.
                   See the following evaluation of learning:

"Variable Speed Playback of Digitally Recorded Lectures: Evaluating Learner Feedback," by Joel D. Galbraith
(joel_galbraith@byu.edu ) and Steven G. Spencer --- http://www.enounce.com/docs/BYUPaper020319.pdf

Basic accounting students At BYU have great success learning accounting from special videos --- http://www.accountingcds.com/index.html

Contact Information:
Cameron Earl 801-836-5649 cameronearl@byu.edu
Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu

Update message on November 3, 2005

Bob has posted our new website in an earlier post, but the new URL to our new website describing our accounting tools is www.accountingcds.com

We have a demo of VSP (the technology that speeds up the video and audio) technology here: http://www.accountingcds.com/learn/links/vspdemo.htm

Cameron Earl

BYU

Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf

Master Educators Who Deliver Exceptional Courses or Entire Programs
But Have Little Contact With Individual Students

Before reading this section, you should be familiar with the document at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

Master educators can also be outstanding researchers, although research is certainly not a requisite to being a master educator. Many master educators are administrators of exceptional accounting education programs. They're administrative duties typically leave little time for research, although they may write about education and learning. Some master educators are not even tenure track faculty.

What I've noticed in recent years is how technology can make a huge difference. Nearly every college these days has some courses in selected disciplines because they are utilizing some type exciting technology. Today I returned from a trip to Jackson, Mississippi where I conduced a day-long CPE session on education technology for accounting educators in Mississippi (what great southern hospitality by the way). So the audience would not have to listen to me the entire day, I invited Cameron Earl from Brigham Young University to make a presentation that ran for about 90 minutes. I learned some things about top educators at BYU, which by the way is one of the most respected universities in the world. If you factor out a required religion course on the Book of Mormon, the most popular courses on the BYU campus are the two basic accounting courses. By popular I mean in terms of thousands of students who elect to take these courses even if they have no intention of majoring in business or economics where these two courses are required. Nearly all humanities and science students on campus try to sign up for these two accounting courses.

After students take these two courses, capacity constraints restrict the numbers of successful students in these courses who are then allowed to become accounting majors at BYU. I mean I'm talking about a very, very small percentage who are allowed to become accounting students. Students admitted to the accounting program generally have over 3.7 minimum campus-wide grade averages.

This begs the question of what makes the two basic accounting courses so exceptionally popular in such a large and prestigious university?

These two basic accounting courses are not sought out for easy grades. In fact they are among the hardest courses for high grades at BYU. I think that this is probably true in most business schools in the nation.

These two BYU courses are not sought out for face-to-face contact with the instructor. The courses have thousands of students each term such that most students do not see the instructor outside of class even though he's available over ten hours per week for those who seek him out. Each course only meets in live classes eight times per semester. Most of the speakers in those eight classes are outstanding visiting speakers who add a great deal to the popularity of the course. This is often one difference between a course run by a master educator versus a master teacher. A master educator often brings in top talent to inspire and educate students.

The courses undoubtedly benefit from the the shortage of accounting graduates in colleges nationwide and the exceptional career opportunities for students who want careers in accounting, taxation, law, business management, government, criminal justice, and other organizations. But these accountancy advantages exist for every college that has an accounting education program. Most all colleges do not have two basic accounting courses that are sought out by every student in the entire university. That makes BYU's two basic accounting courses truly exceptional.

Some courses in every college are popular these days because they are doing something exceptional with technology. These two BYU courses increased in popularity when a self-made young man became a multimillionaire and decided to devote his life to being a master educator in these two accountancy courses at BYU. His name is Norman Nemrow. He runs these courses full time without salary at BYU and is neither a tenure track faculty member or a noted researcher at BYU. I think he qualifies, however, as an education researcher even if he does not publish his findings in academic journals. The video disks are available to anyone in the world for a relatively small fee that goes to BYU, but BYU is not doing this for purposes of making great profits. You can read more about how to get the course disks at the following links:

Basic accounting students At BYU have great success learning accounting from special videos --- http://www.accountingcds.com/index.html
Contact Information: Cameron Earl 801-836-5649 cameronearl@byu.edu

Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu

Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf

The students in these two courses learn the technical aspects of from variable-speed video disks that were produced by Norman and a team of video and learning experts. Cameron Earl is a recent graduate of BYU who is part of the technical team that delivers these two courses on video. Formal studies of Nemrow's video courses indicate that students generally prefer to learn from the video relative to live lectures. The course has computer labs run by teaching assistants who can give live tutorials to individual students, but most students who have the video disks for their own computers do not seek out the labs.

Trivia Question
At BYU most students on campus elect to take Norman Nemrow's two basic accounting courses. In the distant past, what exceptional accounting professor managed to get his basic accounting courses required at a renowned university while he was teaching these courses?

Trivia Answer
Bill Paton is one of the all-time great accounting professors in history. His home campus was the University of Michigan, and for a period of time virtually all students at his university had to take basic accounting (or at least so I was told by several of Paton's former doctoral students). Bill Paton was one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame.

As an aside, I might mention that I favor requiring two basic accounting courses for every student admitted to a college or university, including colleges who do not even have business education programs.
But the "required accounting courses" would not, in my viewpoint, be a traditional basic accounting courses. About two thirds or more of these courses should be devoted to personal finance, investing, business law, tax planning. The remainder of the courses should touch on accounting basics for keeping score of business firms and budgeting for every organization in society.

At the moment, the majority of college graduates do not have a clue about the time value of money and the basics of finance and accounting that they will face the rest of their lives.

There are other ways of being "mastery educators" without being master teachers in a traditional sense. Three professors of accounting at the University of Virginia developed and taught a year-long intermediate accounting case where students virtually had to teach themselves in a manner that they found painful and frustrating. But there are metacognitive reasons where the end result made this year-long active learning task one of the most meaningful and memorable experiences in their entire education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm
They often painfully grumbled with such comments as "everything I'm learned in this course I'm having to learn by myself."

You can read about mastery learning and all its frustrations at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching

Question
Should you share your knowledge on YouTube?

"Thanks to YouTube, Professors Are Finding New Audiences," Jeffrey R. Young, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2008/01/1159n.htm

One Web site that opened this week, Big Think, hopes to be "a YouTube for ideas." The site offers interviews with academics, authors, politicians, and other thinkers. Most of the subjects are filmed in front of a plain white background, and the interviews are chopped into bite-sized pieces of just a few minutes each. The short clips could have been served up as text quotes, but Victoria R. M. Brown, co-founder of Big Think, says video is more engaging. "People like to learn and be informed of things by looking and watching and learning," she says.

YouTube itself wants to be a venue for academe. In the past few months, several colleges have signed agreements with the site to set up official "channels." The University of California at Berkeley was the first, and the University of Southern California, the University of New South Wales, in Australia, and Vanderbilt University soon followed.

It remains an open question just how large the audience for talking eggheads is, though. After all, in the early days of television, many academics hoped to use the medium to beam courses to living rooms, with series like CBS's Sunrise Semester. which began in 1957. Those efforts are now a distant memory.

Things may be different now, though, since the Internet offers a chance to connect people with the professors and topics that most interest them.

Even YouTube was surprised by how popular the colleges' content has been, according to Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley's Learning Systems Group. Lectures are long, after all, while most popular YouTube videos run just a few minutes. (Lonelygirl, the diary of a teenage girl, had episodes that finished in well under a minute. Many other popular shorts involve cute animals or juvenile stunts). Yet some lectures on Berkeley's channel scored 100,000 viewers each, and people were sitting through the whole talks. "Professors in a sense are rock stars," Mr. Hochman concludes. "We're getting as many hits as you would find with some of the big media players."

YouTube officials insist that they weren't surprised by the buzz, and they say that more colleges are coming forward. "We expect that education will be a vibrant category on YouTube," said Obadiah Greenberg, strategic partner manager at YouTube, in an e-mail interview. "Everybody loves to learn."

To set up an official channel on YouTube, colleges must sign an agreement with the company, though no money changes hands. That allows the colleges to brand their section of the site, by including a logo or school colors, and to upload longer videos than typical users are allowed.

The company hasn't exactly made it easy to find the academic offerings, though. Clicking on the education category shows a mix of videos, including ones with babes posing in lingerie and others on the lectures of Socrates. But that could change if the company begins to sign up more colleges and pay more attention to whether videos are appearing in the correct subject areas, says Dan Colman, director and associate dean of Stanford University's continuing-studies program, who runs a blog tracking podcasts and videos made by colleges and professors.

In many cases, the colleges were already offering the videos they are putting on YouTube on their own Web sites, or on Apple's iTunes U, an educational section of the iTunes Store. But college officials say that teaming up with YouTube is greatly expanding their audiences because so many people are poking around the service already.

Continued in article

UC Berkeley and other major universities now offer hundreds of courses on YouTube --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Question
If you want to go on YouTube, how should you make your videos?

Jensen Answer
I recommend featuring computer screens that you narrate using Camtasia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

However, you can also get a digital video camera. I suggest that professors consult their media departments on campus.

Question
Should you share your knowledge on YouTube?

"Thanks to YouTube, Professors Are Finding New Audiences," Jeffrey R. Young, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/free/2008/01/1159n.htm

One Web site that opened this week, Big Think, hopes to be "a YouTube for ideas." The site offers interviews with academics, authors, politicians, and other thinkers. Most of the subjects are filmed in front of a plain white background, and the interviews are chopped into bite-sized pieces of just a few minutes each. The short clips could have been served up as text quotes, but Victoria R. M. Brown, co-founder of Big Think, says video is more engaging. "People like to learn and be informed of things by looking and watching and learning," she says.

YouTube itself wants to be a venue for academe. In the past few months, several colleges have signed agreements with the site to set up official "channels." The University of California at Berkeley was the first, and the University of Southern California, the University of New South Wales, in Australia, and Vanderbilt University soon followed.

It remains an open question just how large the audience for talking eggheads is, though. After all, in the early days of television, many academics hoped to use the medium to beam courses to living rooms, with series like CBS's Sunrise Semester. which began in 1957. Those efforts are now a distant memory.

Things may be different now, though, since the Internet offers a chance to connect people with the professors and topics that most interest them.

Even YouTube was surprised by how popular the colleges' content has been, according to Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley's Learning Systems Group. Lectures are long, after all, while most popular YouTube videos run just a few minutes. (Lonelygirl, the diary of a teenage girl, had episodes that finished in well under a minute. Many other popular shorts involve cute animals or juvenile stunts). Yet some lectures on Berkeley's channel scored 100,000 viewers each, and people were sitting through the whole talks. "Professors in a sense are rock stars," Mr. Hochman concludes. "We're getting as many hits as you would find with some of the big media players."

YouTube officials insist that they weren't surprised by the buzz, and they say that more colleges are coming forward. "We expect that education will be a vibrant category on YouTube," said Obadiah Greenberg, strategic partner manager at YouTube, in an e-mail interview. "Everybody loves to learn."

To set up an official channel on YouTube, colleges must sign an agreement with the company, though no money changes hands. That allows the colleges to brand their section of the site, by including a logo or school colors, and to upload longer videos than typical users are allowed.

The company hasn't exactly made it easy to find the academic offerings, though. Clicking on the education category shows a mix of videos, including ones with babes posing in lingerie and others on the lectures of Socrates. But that could change if the company begins to sign up more colleges and pay more attention to whether videos are appearing in the correct subject areas, says Dan Colman, director and associate dean of Stanford University's continuing-studies program, who runs a blog tracking podcasts and videos made by colleges and professors.

In many cases, the colleges were already offering the videos they are putting on YouTube on their own Web sites, or on Apple's iTunes U, an educational section of the iTunes Store. But college officials say that teaming up with YouTube is greatly expanding their audiences because so many people are poking around the service already.

Continued in article

BigThink: YouTube for Scholars (where intellectuals may post their lectures on societal issues) --- http://www.bigthink.com/

TED: Technology, Entertainment, and Design Lectures --- http://www.ted.com/

UC Berkeley and other major universities now offer hundreds of courses on YouTube --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

January 9, 2008 reply from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

Here's another question: I notice that education academics are poo-poo'ing the "lecture" delivery methodology (in favor of "active learning", "participatory education", "learner physical engagement", etc.), but education *practitioners* are exponentially snowballing the production of "sit down and watch me"-type of passive "entertainment" delivery mechanisms....

Could it be that accounting is not the only domain with a disconnect between academics and practitioners?

Just a thought. ;-)

Having suffered through raising a terribly attention-deficit child (and we know with certainty the early-childhood cause of this particular case), I can't help but marvel at how the short video clips (sound bites?) are catering to the learning styles of the present hyperactive generation of learners. --- This begs another question: Since much of human progress has resulted from in-depth understanding which requires longer-term periods of study and contemplation for full comprehension and synthesis, what long-term impact will the present ubiquity of these "attention-deficit-reinforcing" delivery mechanisms have on the development of intellect in the upcoming generation?

Will there be an evolutionary morphosis in the process of human thought, some kind of change we haven't thought about or foreseen, where human intellect might no longer require lengthy periods of "gearing up mentally" in order to understand and comprehend and analyze and synthesize complex ideas and thoughts?

Just a few musings by an old grey-haired has-been who still enjoys sitting down in an easy chair and spending an hour or two at a time with a printed book, and who just yesterday got really irritated (privately) with a grad student who complained bitterly about the length of a 17-page paper whose reading is required for next-week's class.

David Fordham
PBGH Faculty Fellow
James Madison University School of Accounting

January 9, 2008 reply from Richard J. Campbell [campbell@VIRTUALPUBLISHING.NET]

Bob: If you do a search on www.youtube.com for "campbell79" you will see an accounting video I put up a year ago on the basic accounting equation - it has over 9,000 hits. When I have time, google has an adsense program in which I can monetize that content by inserting ads.

Do a search for "susancrosson". She has a number of videos.

Richard

January 9, 2008 reply from Steven Hornik [shornik@BUS.UCF.EDU]

David, With respect to your inquiry about short video clips and the potential consequences. I have found that when I moved my lectures online, I deliberately made them short, to cover just one or two main concepts. So that a lecture that covers financial accounting transactions that might have taken 1.5 hours or so in a traditional setting, can now be broken down into 4-5 shorter lectures. In my experience students have a hard time concentrating for 1.5 hours on accounting topics - I'm not the best lecturer, but the material isn't all that stimulating at times either. So I tell my students when you can find 20 minutes of uninterrupted time, watch one of the lectures - give it your undivided attention. Do this once a day if you have to and then by the end of the week they will have listened/watched the entire lecture. I'm not sure if this is reinforcing short attention spans or not, but I think it provides students a much better way to concentrate on the material. Then after watching a short video, they can spend quality time thinking about the lecture, doing problems, etc. It's this time, the working with the concepts, that to me seems the most important. Just my 2 cents, _____________________________ Dr. Steven Hornik University of Central Florida Dixon School of Accounting 407-823-5739 Second Life: Robins Hermano http://mydebitcredit.com yahoo ID: shornik

January 9, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Steve,

You’ve just hit on the main comparative advantage of asynchronous/hypermedia learning (in which video can play a major part). Learners may focus on material when they are prepared to concentrate and replay material over and over that they did not master in previous attempts.

Camtasia has made the video more interesting by making lectures much more than video of talking heads.

It really helps to have variable speed video to increase the efficiency of the asynchronous learning process. Probably the greatest experiment of this for all time can be found in the year-long basic accounting courses at Brigham Young University (BYU) where virtually all technical matters in basic accounting are learned asynchronously on video with the possible (but not required) supplemental help from a textbook.

Much of the absolutely tremendous experimental work on asynchronous learning (including BYU links on variable speed video) can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Bob Jensen

Question
If you want to go on YouTube, how should you make your videos?

Jensen Answer
I recommend featuring computer screens that you narrate using Camtasia --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

However, you can also get a digital video camera. I suggest that professors consult their media departments on campus.

Question
What is the new YouTube for Intellectuals?

"'YouTube for Intellectuals' Goes Live," by Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2646/youtube-for-intellectuals-goes-live?at

'YouTube for Intellectuals' Goes Live Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the importance of racial, socioeconomic, and religious diversity at colleges in a video on bigthink, a new Web site that is meant to be a YouTube for intellectuals. In addition to featuring academics, the site includes one- to two-minute videos from politicians, artists, and business people.

According to an article in Monday’s New York Times, the site was started by Peter Hopkins, a 2004 graduate of Harvard University. He said he hopes bigthink becomes popular among college students. David Frankel, a venture capitalist, put up most of the money for the enterprise. Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard, has invested tens of thousands of dollars as well.

Bob Jensen's video search helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#Video

January 9, 2008 reply from Joseph Brady [bradyj@lerner.udel.edu]

Judging from my quick scan this morning, this site is not very much like YouTube, but the topics do look interesting.

Joe

Evaluation of ALN Experiments at the University of Illinois

Bob Jensen's threads on assessments can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Update on August 12, 2000
Outcomes assessment of the multi-million dollar, multi-year experiments on campus at the University of Illinois regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of asynchronous learning classes vis-a-vis traditional classes. (Listen to Dan Stone's audio and download his Powerpoint Presentation). http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

The main page for the ALN experimental plans and evaluations at the University of Illinois can be found at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/ Only one course had a cost savings goal, and you can read about is along with the evaluation for the entire 1997 plan at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/eval_plan.html

Click on http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/slide01.htm to see Professor Oakley's PowerPoint slide on grade impacts in the course ECE 270 (Intermediate Microeconomics). Early evidence indicates that students do as well or better in asynchronous courses that do not meet in classrooms. Another PowerPoint slide on the same page shows substantial increases in communication between a student and the instructor(s) and other students.

Scale PowerPoint Overview --- http://www.aln.org/conference/proceedings/1996/96_oakley.pdf
Also see http://edtech.cites.uiuc.edu/FSIarchive/1997/presentations/ward2.ppt

"The SCALE Efficiency Projects," by Lanny Arvan et al --- http://www.alnresearch.org/Data_Files/articles/full_text/arvan2.htm

This paper presents evidence from nine "Efficiency Projects" that were SCALE’s focus in the 1997-98 academic year. The Efficiency Projects were specifically aimed at using ALN to achieve higher student/faculty ratios, without sacrificing instructional quality. The study concentrates on data amassed for the fall 1997 semester. Evidence was collected on the cost side, for ALN development and delivery, and the performance/attitude side, from both student and faculty perspectives. The study supports the view that when a sensible pedagogic approach is embraced that affords the students with avenues to communicate about their learning, ALN can produce real efficiency gains in courses without sacrificing the quality of instruction.

Student evaluations for the Fall 1995 semester are summarized at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/evaluations/fall95/index.html

It appears that over the years, the links to the SCALE experiments are broken. Perhaps the study results are no longer freely online. You can of course read my summaries and listen to Dan Stone describe the program --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

I kept the PowerPoint slides for one course (micro economics) in the experiment at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/slide01.htm
That course was very typical of many of the outcomes on grading.

The principal investigator in the SCALE project was an economics professor named Lanny Arvan. I suspect he will willingly cooperate with researchers who really want to investigate his SCALE project --- http://www.economics.uiuc.edu/people/larvan/
It was indeed a well funded research project.

The Sloan Foundation may also have some SCALE reports that Lanny can point you to since much of the SCALE funding was Sloan money.

The Executive Summary reads as follows:

ALN Promoted ...

Increased communications
"I learned much more than I ever had due to the high interaction between student/student and student/teacher."

Survey results revealed 51% of the students reported an increase in communication with the instructor and 43% with other students. Approximately 40% of the students reported an increase in the quality of their interaction with the instructor. One professor wrote, "I believe the quality of my interactions with students was the highest I have ever experienced." Students liked "asking questions that couldn't be asked in class," "better understanding different points of view," "the ease in getting in touch with the professor," and "talking more to my peers."

Improved access to information

"Information when you want/need it."

Students liked having "personal control of information" and "quick-response times from peers and students." They found that "on-line testing was easy and convenient," "study material was easy to access," "material was never lost...and always available," the Web served "as a great supplement to lectures," and they could "pay more attention in class and worry less about taking notes."

Added to learning environment

"It added flavor to course, broadened it beyond just the classroom."

Students commented that ALN "was a new and exciting way to learn" that "added depth" to the class. It also enabled them "to be more prepared for class," gave them "a lot of time to learn out of class," and allowed them "to work at own pace." Some students believed the "on-line homework was a great experience" and that on-line quizzes were "a good way to study for exams." Survey results indicated approximately 70% of the students would like to take another course using computer conferencing. About 75% of the responding students rated their overall experience with computer conferencing good, very good, or excellent. Approximately 60% of the students reported an increase in the amount of their learning due to the use of computer conferencing.

Facilitated the learning of computers

"Increased my knowledge and confidence with computers."

Approximately 70% of the students indicated on the survey an increase in their familiarity with computers. Students reported "feeling less apprehensive about using computers" and thought that their ALN course provided "a good opportunity to learn more about computers."

If/When ...

Students/Instructors were adequately trained

"It might have affected the way I learned if I had been able to use it."

"Make a mandatory class on how to use the system."

Approximately 75% of the students responding to the survey found the use of FirstClass [FC] or PacerForum [PF] to be easy or somewhat easy. However, there were students in all but a few of the classes interviewed who expressed a desire for more or better training. Students requested "more tutorial instruction," "better documentation," and "written instructions on how to get it [FC] from home." Some students thought their instructor should have "introduced it sooner in the semester," provided a "mandatory class on how to use the system" and done a better job of "explaining why we are doing it."

Students made an effort

"If you took the time to read what other class members had to say it was of great benefit to me and what I learned."

On the survey, approximately 60% of the students reported using computer conferencing at least once a week. Forty percent didn't use or minimally used conferencing. Females reported using conferencing slightly more than did males.

About one half of the students used campus computer labs when using the computer, while approximately one quarter used residence hall labs or accessed a computer in their apartment or residence hall room. When asked about computer participation in the ten class interviews typically a third to one half of the students indicated reading the postings of their classmates.

Instructors made an effort

"If you are going to include it, give some sort of incentive to use it."

"Do more than just postings."

A consistent theme appears in the ten class interviews and survey results; most students will participate in ALN activities when (a) they know how to participate, (b) it isn't too difficult to do so, and (c) it is worth their time and effort. The first and third conditions can be directly addressed by the instructor, whereas the second condition requires campus support. Students seem to be less interested in participating when an instructor "tacks on ALN to a course." In responding to various open-ended items on the survey the students are asking instructors to "do more than just postings," "to do more than answer questions," to use ALN "more than once a week," to "increase interactive programs," and to "put useful things/readings on FC."

There was sufficient access to computers

"It was more of a hassle than it was worth."

"The [modem] lines were always busy."

"It was hard to find an available computer."

Getting access to a computer was the most often cited complaint on the survey and in all of the class interviews. As one student explained, "After standing in line for an hour I don't have time to do anything more than post my own work." "Busy phone lines" prevented some from working at home while others on campus were frustrated with "filled computer labs." As one student summed up, "Get more computers or get rid of it."

The computers and computer software were user-friendly

"Have less technical problems."

"Password didn't work."

"I couldn't login, so I stopped using it."

Overall, most students appeared to find the Web, PF or FC software to be somewhat easy to use once they knew how to login and locate them at various computer sites. However, "getting to the software" was difficult for some. Students in all of the class interviews spoke of "system crashes," "inabilities to login due to password problems," or "problems locating the programs at the different sites on campus." For some students these difficulties discouraged further use. Still other students wanted the software to do more. Their requests for "an editor on PF," "better graphing capabilities on FC," "easier ways to transfer files," and "better communication between FC and the Web" addressed their needs for a more integrated computer package.

So what's next ... (what we will be watching)

Beyond computer conferencing

Essentially, ALN in the Fall of 1995 meant computer conferencing and course materials on the Web. Already the SCALE faculty are talking to us about building on their fall experience to use new technologies or to improve their use of those already tried. Said one professor, "We still have room for improvement." New SCALE proposals also reveal expanded definitions of ALN including the implementation of video conferencing, interactive Web activities, and inter-institutional collaboration.

Improved access and training

Problems of computer access and technical difficulties will never go away entirely but they should be reduced as computer site monitors gain experience, additional modems are added to the campus infrastructure, lab sites are better prepared for student, using ALN software, and students/faculty learn from their mistakes.

The economies of SCALE

This semester 58% of the faculty responding to the survey reported taking more time than normal on their ALN courses. However, as faculty continue to refine their use of ALN the campus should expect to see some savings in costs and time. For example, two faculty members have told us of their plans to reduce the number of class meeting times based on their use of computer conferencing in the fall, while another professor is planning to co-teach a course with an instructor at another university.

Enhanced performance

Does ALN enhance student performance? At least three professors believed the students in their ALN courses outperformed students in the past. The evaluation team helped collect statistics for one professor wherein students who took on-line quizzes outperformed those who didn't. For the spring semester we are working with several professors who are structuring their courses to compare ALN and non-ALN taught students in terms of achievement. We may find some answers to the opening question.

Other advantages and disadvantages of ALN are discussed by me at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245ch02.htm#Asynchronous1
A PowerPoint slide show can be found in the PP Presentation link at http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/project/mediasource/COTT_CIT/index.htm
The first PP Presentation slide is at http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/project/mediasource/COTT_CIT/sld001.htm

An interesting paper by William H. Geoghegan at IBM Academic Consulting is entitled "WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY?" discusses some of the issues as to why the faculty are not yet adapting to education technologies. Estimates run as high as 95% of higher education faculty are not using these technologies. Geoghegan analyses social and diffusion barriers in particular. The paper is at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/links/library/geoghegan/wpi.html

Barriers to adaption appear to lie more with faculty and educational instututions than with students.

Evaluation of ALN Programs at the University of North Texas

On January 17, 2003, Ed Scribner forwarded this article from The Dallas Morning News

Students Who Live on Campus Choosing Internet Courses Syndicated From: The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS - Jennifer Pressly could have walked to a nearby lecture hall for her U.S. history class and sat among 125 students a few mornings a week.

But the 19-year-old freshman at the University of North Texas preferred rolling out of bed and attending class in pajamas at her dorm-room desk. Sometimes she would wait until Saturday afternoon.

The teen from Rockwall, Texas, took her first college history class online this fall semester. She never met her professor and knew only one of her 125 classmates: her roommate.

"I take convenience over lectures," she said. "I think I would be bored to death if I took it in lecture."

She's part of a controversial trend that has surprised many university officials across the country. Given a choice, many traditional college students living on campus pick an online course. Most universities began offering courses via the Internet in the late 1990s to reach a different audience - older students who commute to campus and are juggling a job and family duties.

During the last year, UNT began offering an online option for six of its highest-enrollment courses that are typically taught in a lecture hall with 100 to 500 students. The online classes, partly offered as a way to free up classroom space in the growing school, filled up before pre-registration ended, UNT officials said. At UNT, 2,877 of the about 23,000 undergraduates are taking at least one course online.

Nationwide, colleges are reporting similar experiences, said Sally Johnstone, director of WCET, a Boulder, Colo., cooperative of state higher education boards and universities that researches distance education. Kansas State University, in a student survey last spring, discovered that 80 percent of its online students were full-time and 20 percent were part-time, the opposite of the college's expectations, Johnstone said.

"Why pretend these kids want to be in a class all the time? They don't, but kids don't come to campus to sit in their dorm rooms and do things online exclusively," she said. "We're in a transition, and it's a complex one."

(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

The UT Telecampus, a part of the University of Texas System that serves 15 universities and research facilities, began offering online undergraduate classes in state-required courses two years ago. Its studies show that 80 percent of the 2,260 online students live on campus, and the rest commute.

Because they are restricted to 30 students each, the UT System's online classes are touted as a more intimate alternative to lecture classes, said Darcy Hardy, director of the UT Telecampus.

"The freshman-sophomore students are extremely Internet-savvy and understand more about online options and availability than we could have ever imagined," Hardy said.

Online education advocates say professors can reach students better online than in lecture classes because of the frequent use of e-mail and online discussion groups. Those who oppose the idea say they worry that undergraduates will miss out on the debate, depth and interaction of traditional classroom instruction.

UNT, like most colleges, is still trying to figure out the effect on its budget. The professorial salary costs are the same, but an online course takes more money to develop. The online students, however, free up classroom space and eliminate the need for so many new buildings in growing universities. The price to enroll is typically the same for students, whether they go to a classroom or sit at their computer.

Mike Campbell, a history professor at UNT for 36 years, does not want to teach an online class, nor does he approve of offering undergraduate history via the Internet.

"People shouldn't be sitting in the dorms doing this rather than walking over here," he said. "That is based on a misunderstanding of what matters in history."

In his class of 125, he asks students rhetorical questions they answer en masse to be sure they're paying attention, he said. He goes beyond the textbook, discussing such topics as the moral and legal issues surrounding slavery.

He said he compares the online classes to the correspondence courses he hated but had to teach when he came to UNT in 1966. Both methods are too impersonal, he said, recalling how he mailed assignments and tests to correspondence students.

UNT professors who teach online say the courses are interactive, unlike correspondence courses.

Matt Pearcy has lectured 125 students for three hours at a time.

"You'd try to be entertaining," he said. "You have students who get bored after 45 minutes, no matter what you're doing. They're filling out notes, doing their to-do list, reading their newspaper in front of you."

In his online U.S. history class at UNT, students get two weeks to finish each lesson. They read text, complete click-and-drag exercises, like one that matches terms with historical figures, and take quizzes. They participate in online discussions and group projects, using e-mail to communicate.

"Hands-down, I believe this is a more effective way to teach," said Pearcy, who is based in St. Paul, Minn. "In this setting, they go to the class when they're ready to learn. They're interacting, so they're paying attention."

Pressly said she liked the hands-on work in the online class. She could do crossword puzzles to reinforce her history lessons. Or she could click an icon and see what Galileo saw through his telescope in the 17th century.

"I took more interest in this class than the other ones," she said.

The class, though, required her to be more disciplined, she said, and that added stress. Two weeks in a row, she waited till 11:57 p.m. Sunday - three minutes before the deadline - to turn in her assignment.

Online courses aren't for everybody.

"The thing about sitting in my dorm, there's so much to distract me," said Trevor Shive, a 20-year-old freshman at UNT. "There's the Internet. There's TV. There's radio."

He said students on campus should take classes in the real, not virtual, world.

"They've got legs; they can walk to class," he said.

Continued in the article at http://www.dallasnews.com/

Evaluation of ALN Experiments at the New Jersey Institute of Technology

The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) also received a Sloan Foundation ALN grant and to date has conducted 26 courses as reported below by one of my students named Kattie Lawrence:

In 1998 NJIT was ranked nationally by Money Magazine as the 6^th top value for science and technology universities. The school has 8,200 students enrolled with 76 different available degrees. Like UIUC, NJIT’s ALN program is being funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The University was given a grant to fund cyber classes, and the grant was extended in 1997 for an additional three years. NJIT’s first experiments with ALN began in 1986, and during its subsequent years of research NJIT has developed and trademarked its Virtual ClassroomTM program, a specially tailored form of educational computer conferencing. This program was used in combination with video in the creation of ALN courses. To date, there have been 26 courses developed which make use of Virtual ClassroomTM and video (whether that be pre-recorded lectures delivered to students on videotape, or via broadcast on a cable channel or satellite, or videos using standard television courses.) Both on campus students as well as distance students are able to take advantage of the Virtual ClassroomTM (VC) system, and enrollment has consisted of a mixture of student types. For distance learning, VC + video is used, while for on campus student VC is combined with face to face classes. VC is a tool that may be used to add an asynchronous element to classes, thus integrating this fairly new technological addition into courses.

Virtual ClassroomTM has proven very successful at NJIT, as most ALN programs have across the world. The main focus of the ALN courses at NJIT is for the major courses needed for bachelor’s degrees in Information Systems and Computer Science. The most recent ALN option available at NJIT is the addition of the on-line B.S. in Information Systems.

NJIT's reviews of distance learning and ALN are given at http://www.njit.edu/DL/s6glance.html Course materials and links to actual courses can be found at http://eies.njit.edu/~hiltz/ for Professor Hiltz and http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/ for Professor Turoff. Research papers available on line are linked at http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/#a5 . A paper of particular interest is entitled "Alternative Futures for Distance Learning: The Force and the Darkside" at http://eies.njit.edu/~turoff/Papers/darkaln.html

The most extensive reporting of the results of the NJIT experiments is given by Roxanne Hiltz at http://eies.njit.edu/~hiltz/workingpapers/philly/philly.htm where it is reported that (emphasis added):

New Jersey Institute of Technology has been delivering college courses via an Asynchronous
Learning Network (ALN) system called the Virtual Classroom[TM] for a decade, using various
media mixes. Currently, two complete undergraduate degree programs are available via a mix of
video plus Virtual Classroom, the B.A. in Information Systems and the B.S. in Computer Science.

This paper presents preliminary findings about impacts on students, and touches on some issues and potential impacts on faculty, individual universities, and the structure of higher education. Overall ratings of courses by students who complete ALN based courses are equal or superior to those for traditional courses. Dropout or Incomplete outcomes are somewhat more prevalent, while grade distributions for those who complete tend to be similar to those for traditional courses. For both students and faculty, more startup time devoted to solving the "logistics" of ALN delivery seems to be required at the beginning of courses. ALN delivery is not just a "different" way of doing the same thing, however; it is likely to change the nature and structure of higher education.

NJIT offers complete degree programs via ACCESS/NJIT. These programs, however, rely heavily upon "Tele-Lecture" components distributed on videotapes that students study at their own time and place and replay as often as needed. There is also a The Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center (CCCC) for conferencing at http://eies.njit.edu:5230/pub/cccc.html

Update Notes

I read the following for a scheduled program of the 29th Annual Accounting Education Conference, October 17-18, 2003 Sponsored by the Texas CPA Society, San Antonio Airport Hilton.

WEB-BASED AND FACE-TO-FACE INSTRUCTION:
A COMPARISON OF LEARNING OUTCOMES IN A FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING COURSE

Explore the results of a study conducted over a four-semester period that focused on the same graduate level financial accounting course that was taught using web-based instruction and face-to-face instruction. Discuss the comparison of student demographics and characteristics, course satisfaction, and comparative statistics related to learning outcomes.

Doug Rusth/associate professor/University of Houston at Clear Lake/Clear Lake

Bob Jensen's threads on comparisons and assessment are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Evaluation of Audit Education in NYU's Virtual College

The Institute of Internal Auditors teamed up with New York University's Virtual College. One of the key problems of traditional classes that is overcome with virtual classes is discussed by the Director of Information Technologies (Richard Vigilante) as follows:

Systems Auditing is characterized by two broad categories of knowledge: Declarative and procedural. Declarative knowledge represents the concepts of the field and is readily learned through traditional classroom lectures and discussions. Procedural knowledge represents the process inherent in the field and is best acquired through hands-on activities in collaborative teams of students simulating real analyses and audits.

Faculty in our on-campus courses tried to get students to meet after class and to team up on group projects—all to little avail. Faculty consistently recounted the students’ frustrating attempts to meet, only to have them spend more time agreeing on a meeting time than actually meeting. The result was that too often professors are forced to reduce key procedural concepts to declarative how-to lists.

NYU’s Virtual College was designed to address access problems facing its part-time auditing students and provide them with the same level of dynamic, hands-on instruction that characterizes the best on-campus course, laboratory, and faculty access available to full-time students. With 1.3 million in grant support from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NYU has developed and delivered online multimedia instruction in systems auditing to students’ PCs.

In the new multimedia telecourses, digital videos contain faculty demonstrations, computer animation, and case study simulations to increase student mastery and retention of concepts, methodologies, and tools. The teleprogram’s digital ISDN phone lines provide a 128 Kbps connection to the Virtual College servers, projecting the on-campus computer laboratory "look and feel" of sophisticated software applications directly to the students’ and faculty’s PCs.

Richard Vigilante, Director of Information Technologies, NYU Virtual College
"Audit Education on The Information Superhighway"
IIA Educator, The Instute of Internal Auditors
May 1998, 3-5

Conclusion

Does technology have no discernable impact on learning?
I've never been a disciple of technology. For me cell phones are multifunctional, multicolor devices that empower millions of us with little worth saying to interrupt other millions of us who ought to have something better to do. I don't want my car to talk to me, I don't want General Motors to know my latitude and longitude, and I don't need a pocket-size liquid crystal New York Times or instant access to thirty-second videos of skateboarding dogs , , , Many American students aren't doing all that well academically, and almost as many experts are peddling cures. Many prescribe computers as the miracle that will rescue our kids from scholastic mediocrity. That's why states like Michigan and Pennsylvania distributed laptops to thousands of students. Maine led the parade by handing out laptops to every seventh and eighth grader. Sponsors of the giveaways promised "higher student performance." Unfortunately, the results have been disappointing. When the test results of Maine students showed no improvement, boosters explained that it would "take more time for the impact of laptops to show up." Inconveniently, Maine's lackluster outcome only confirmed a rigorous international study of student computer use in thirty-one countries, which found that students who use computers at school "perform sizably and statistically worse" than students who don't. Analysts warned that when computer use replaces "traditional learning methods," it "actually harms the student." A review of California schools determined that Internet access had "no measurable impact on student achievement." A 2007 federal study concluded that classroom use of reading and math software likewise yielded "no significant differences" in student performance.
Peter Berger, "Stuck on the Cutting Edge," The Irascible Professor, December 19, 2007 --- http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-12-19-07.htm

Jensen Comment
Anecdotally technology can favorably impact learning. In my own case, it's had an enormous positive impact on my scholarship, my research, and my publishing. Number 1 are the communications and knowledge sharing (especially from listservs and blogs) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm

Number 2 is the access to enormous databases and knowledge portals --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm

Number 3 is the tremendous increase in access provided by the campus libraries for scholars who take the time and effort to determine what is really there.

Number 4 is open courseware. The open courseware (especially shared lecture materials and videos) from some of the best professors in our leading universities such as 1,500 courses served up by MIT and 177 science courses served up on YouTube by UC Berkeley are truly amazing. Critics of technology have probably never utilized these materials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

I think Peter Berger overlooks some of the positive outcomes of technology on learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#WhatWorks
More importantly look at the SCALE experiments at the University of Illinois --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

Although I always like Peter Berger's essays, this time he also overlooks much of the dark side of technology are learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm

Technology and learning have much more complicated interactions that are superficially glossed over in this particular essay --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Most "vendor" universities feel that networked courses should not be ported to curricula of other universities unless it becomes feasible to effectively and efficiently deal with the messaging and chat line monitoring given student tendencies toward high volumes of messaging in such courses. Hence, "customer" universities may discover that cost savings are not as great as expected if, and when, their programs seek to fill curricula gaps with the gold bridges of prestigious universities and businesses that offer networked courses.

Virtually all analysts recognize the growth prospects of ALN courses networked under the categories of "life long learning," "adult education," "continuing education," or "continuous learning." Growth opportunities become more and more practical as digital television, wireless communication networks, and other technologies become common place around the world. Internet 2 will link campuses with enormous transmission capacities. Whereas on-campus traditional education has relatively flat growth prospects, the industry of network learning has immense and profitable growth opportunities. Furthermore, the need for "customer" universities to fill curricula gaps will fuel the fires of distributed education.

But high quality network (distributed education) courses will be labor intensive in terms of dealing with student messaging and evaluation of student work. Faculty or equivalent experts must be online to evaluate student written and oral communications. Studies have shown that messaging explodes exponentially if asynchronous network courses are to maximize learning effectiveness. Whether or not the "labor" (faculty, graduate students, or hired guns) will be provided by the "vendor" (say MIT) or the "customer" (say Trinity University) is a matter of conjecture. Most likely, the cost of an imported ALN course will be less than cranking up a traditional or ALN course on campus. However, the cost of "faculty" will not be significantly reduced if the networked course is intended to maximize its potential with greatly increased communications beyond those found in a traditional course on campus.

Hypermedia materials development costs are also very high. Vendors will probably seek high prices to help recover such costs. If respected universities contract with ALN vendors to bridge curriculum gaps, the online courses must be much more than text-based documents. The courses must use the latest networking technologies combined with CD databases to overcome bandwidth limitations of the Internet. Before long, DVD discs will replace the CDs and contain hours of full-screen, full-motion video to accompany server-controlled ALN courses.

The concluding point is that by Year 2000 there will be a vast array of credit and non-credit ALN courses of very high quality. Many of these will be available from top universities and corporations around the world. Traditional universities that cling to only limited, and possibly outmoded, courses will find themselves lost in a trail of Internet star dust. Strategies should be formed to bridge curriculum gaps with ALN contracts. This article stresses that ALN is not a cheap alternative in terms of faculty. Early experiments show that students will make more demands on faculty time using ALN that they did in traditional classroom pedagogy. However, students will learn more and communicate better if ALN is used properly with highest quality hypermedia materials and online communication links to faculty.

Click Here to View Working Paper 265 on Metacognition and Fostering Deeper Lerning
Concerns in Designs and Evaluations of Computer Aided Education and Training:
Are We Misleading Ourselves About Measures of Success?

Fostering Deeper Learning: Risks of Teaching More Than You Know
(Copy of Selected Email Messages)

As students commenced on their projects in ACCT 5341 in Spring of 1998, I received the following email message:

Dr J,

I am having problems with this project, as I am sure most of the class is, because I have done a lot of research (and could write a good research paper) but I have NO IDEA how to be creative in the measurement of risk. I keep thinking something will come to me, but so far it hasn’t. I wish I could email you my topic today like we are supposed to, but I don’t have one. I am worried because there is only a little over a month left, and I do not have a clue how to attack this paper. I have thought about writing a case involving the measurement of foreign currency risk, but right now I don’t think I have enough understanding of it to determine if I could write a good case on it. Please understand that although this email is not quite what you wanted (ie I don’t have a topic) I am trying to understand this project and produce something creative

After the course ended, I received the following is a comment by one of my graduate students on a course evaluation form where the student gave me the lowest possible rating:

Dr. Jensen is an effective facilitator but … the topics were quite difficult conceptually, and I was taught more by other students and on my own.

Another gave me the lowest possible rating with the following comment:

Despite how much I disliked the course, I learned more than I expected. Definitely a necessary course!

A student (who gave me a high rating) may in subtle way be admitting that it is difficult for students to take responsibility for their own learning in ambiguous environments:

Yes, we could have used more explanations at times. First few weeks of class we all wondered what we were talking about.

This graduate class grumbled all the time about the ambiguities and work loads of ACCT 5342 in the Fall and ACCT 5341 in the Spring. Students had high anxieties about doing research. But the projects that constituted over 50% of the grade in both courses are among the best projects that I have ever encountered in 33 years of teaching (mostly graduate students) in four universities. Students cursed under their breath during their many hours of discovery learning, but their work will be an inspiration to accounting theory educators and students for years to come. Fall Semester projects are relational databases that cannot be made available at this point in time. However, financial instruments derivatives projects from Spring Semester can be viewed and/or downloaded by clicking here.

My students proposed innovative solutions to problems that international accounting standard setters have not been able to resolve for years. This was a great class in terms of ultimate performance of nearly all of the students.

One problem about making students take responsibility for their own learning is that it seems so foreign to them and requires a lot of more sweat! But if the ultimate rewards are immense, what is wrong with ambiguity and discovery learning? Huge problems center upon risks to the instructor. If I wasn't 60 years old and fully tenured, I would probably be forced to go back to spoon feeding and wiping up memorized regurgitation of answer book solutions to CPA Examination problems. This would certainly be an easier out for me and make me better loved by students facing tough CPA Examinations after graduation. It would also make it easier to meter their grades every week during the semester, which is something they seem to be very keen on.

What is good about students taking responsibility for their own learning? Probably the best thing that can be said for it is that it prepares students for the ambiguities of life after graduation day. One thing that really does please me is that one student in particular had troubles with regurgitation examinations during her entire five years at Trinity University (including some tough examinations that she scored low on in other courses this year). In my courses she soared like an eagle, because she loved research (probably to a fault from the standpoint of her time) and did outstanding work for me. At the other extreme, one of the top g.p.a. regurgitators in the class can memorize anything and received the highest average in some of her other courses. She submitted the worst project in my course and received the lowest grade that I gave all year.

Which of these two students is best prepared for life?

As for me --- I taught them more than I know! Makes me the meanest sob in the valley.

Bob

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-736-7347 Fax: 210-736-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu

Learning Styles Sites

January 1, 2009 message from Pat Wyman [raisingsmarterchildren@gmail.com]

Hello Bob,

Happy New Year! Your name came up through a google alert, attached to my website and the complimentary learning styles inventory at http://www.howtolearn.com

It is on your page, from the community at http://www.elearninglearning.com/learning-styles/microsoft/&query=www.howtolearn.com

I want to thank you for this is and if there is any way I can contribute to your blog and yours to mine, articles, interviews, etc. I'd love to connect with you.

You're doing wonderful work!

Warmly,
Pat Wyman, M.A.

-- Pat Wyman Best selling author, Learning vs. Testing Co-Author,
Book Of The Year In the Medicine Category, The Official Autism 101 Manual
University Instructor of Continuing Education, California State University,
East Bay Founder, http://www.HowToLearn.com and http://wwwRaisingSmarterChildren.com
Winner, James Patterson PageTurner Award Get your copy of Learning vs. Testing with complimentary materials at http://www.learningvstesting4.html

Get Tips For Raising A Smarter Child at http://www.RaisingSmarterChildren.com

"There are two ways you can live your life - one as if nothing is a miracle, and the other as if everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment and learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on metacognitive learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

===========================================================================================

-----Original Message-----

From: rblyston@trinity.edu [SMTP:rblyston@trinity.edu]

Sent: Friday, May 15, 1998 12:33 PM

To: Tiger Talk

Subject: Fwd: Re: What's in a name

To the Trinity community:

Recently I posed a question to another list as to the difference between

the use of the terms instructor and teacher. The response below was

thought provoking. I wonder if anyone at Trinity would care to comment

on Dr. Machin's "comments."

Blystone in Texas

*********************************

Subject: Re: What's in a name

Sent: 5/15/98 10:20 PM

Received: 5/15/98 6:18 PM

From: Nancy Machin, nancym@centaur.cc.purduenc.edu

Reply-To: Biolab, biolab@hubcap.clemson.edu

To: Multiple recipients of list, biolab@hubcap.clemson.edu

Blystone's "interesting use of semantics" is one of my pet topics. I am liable to go on a major rant when I hear a student complain that "he's not a good teacher." That's not his job. He's a professor, not a teacher. His job is to gain as much knowledge as possible in his field and profess that knowledge to the students. He is not trained to teach (how many hours do education students spend learning teaching techniques compared with the in-at-the-deep-end TA experience of most university faculty).

Any teaching he might do, in the sense of helping the students learn, is above and beyond the call of duty (although we all know that if he doesn't "teach" there will be reprimands from the administration and no promotions or raises to say nothing of the fact that the vast majority really want to help their students learn as evidenced by so many of the postings on this list).

A professor is a source of information. It is up to the student to learn as much as possible from that source. Based on Blystones's "interesting use of semantics" the main difference between

high school and college is who has the major responsibility for effecting the transfer of knowledge: the teacher or the student.

*******************************

Nancy Machin
Biology Lab Tech
Purdue University North Central
nancym@mail.purduenc.edu

*******************************

Dr. Hertel’s reply is reproduced below:

Bob Jensen’s intuitions about transfer of training into the real world are supported by findings in cognitive psychology. What he calls "discovery learning" (assuming that it is followed up by "corrections" or "feedback") transfers much better than does memory-oriented training (Needham and Begg, 1991, in a journal entitled Memory & Cognition). We also have evidence that the learner tends to perceive the opposite direction of the difference between the two. Anybody interested can check out a chapter by Robert Bjork in a 1992 (?) volume by Metcalf and Shimamura call Metacognition.

Paula Hertel phertel@trinity.edu
Department of Psychology voice: 210 736 8380
715 Stadium Drive fax: 210 736 8386
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

*********************************************************

Note from Bob Jensen:

The Robert Bjork book (actually Bjork and Bjork) referred to above is described at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0121025705/002-6705839-4009411 (esp. Chapters 14 and 15)

The Metcalf and Shimamura book is described at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262132982/002-6705839-4009411

Also see

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262531488/002-6705839-4009411 (esp. Part III)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0897749901/002-6705839-4009411 (Cooperative Learning)

http://www.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/ecowww/fost.html (Fostering Deeper Learning) In this document, Carol Johnston in the Economics Department at the University of Melbourne states the following:

All teachers bring to the classroom or lecture theatre an inbuilt informal theory of teaching. This theory, which may be either consciously stated or implicit in what the teachers do, has implications for the way in which students learn. Fox (1983) asked newly appointed polytechnic teachers what they meant by 'teaching'. As a result he identified four basic theories underlying the approaches to teaching of polytechnic staff. First, the transfer theory, in which the subject matter is viewed as a commodity that can be transferred into an empty vessel waiting to receive it, ie. the student's mind. If certain students do not learn, despite the fact that the commodity has been transferred, it is because the vessel in this case is a leaky one. This amounts to the view that it is the student's fault if they do not learn. Where teaching materials are well prepared, effectively organised, and imparted, teachers are considered to have done all they can.

A second theory relates to the 'shaping' of the students mind into some predetermined form. This view sits easily with the notion of teaching as training rather than educating. Teachers, with this informal theory, use verbs such as 'develop' and 'produce' to describe the student learning outcomes of their teaching. Fox classifies these two theories of teaching as 'simple' theories which are more likely to be held by the less experienced or non-reflective teacher. Here there is a simple relationship between teaching and learning. If a topic has been taught it must therefore have been learnt. An essential feature of these two theories is that it is the teacher who is in control of the commodity to be transferred and who determines the shape of the finished product.

The third type of theory, a 'developed' theory is one which takes the view that the student and teacher are undertaking a journey of discovery together. This is the notion of the 'shared adventure' that Baird (1992) develops in his exploration of science teaching in Victorian secondary schools. The teacher's role according to this 'travelling' theory is to act as a knowledgeable and experienced guide and fellow explorer in the journey of education. Here a range of perspectives are explored, there is no 'right' body of knowledge to be learnt and the expectation is that the teacher will learn along with the students. Svensson and Hogfors (1988) extended this view in their work with engineering students where they concluded that encouraging students to consider a variety of alternative conceptions is an important element in bringing about lasting conceptual change in the learner.

The growing theory, the final type identified by Fox, is also a developed theory in the sense that students make a significant contribution to their own learning in terms of its pace, direction, objectives and process. The growing theory takes into account the past experiences, learning and knowledge of the student. It is flexible in its outcomes both in terms of the overall direction and the extent or level of that outcome. In travelling and growing developed theories the teacher's role has changed from being an infallible expert responsible for a final product to being a guide who is more responsive to the context in which the learning is occurring.

___________________
Acknowledgment: I am grateful to Frederick L. Neuman from the faculty at the University of Illinois for informing me about their Sloan Foundation ALN grant and the intensity of student messaging in the asynchronous learning experiments being conducted at the University of Illinois. Added information can be obtained by entering the acronym ALN in the search box at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/index.html.

Advantages of Asynchronous Learning Modules and Courses

Appendix 1

Links to Some Key Web Sites

December 19, 2008 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

2008 SURVEY OF ONLINE EDUCATION IN THE U.S.

"Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008" by I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, is the sixth in a series of annual reports on a study conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group for the Sloan Consortium. Using responses from over 2,500 colleges and universities, the study sought answers to several questions on online education:

-- How many students are learning online?

-- What is the impact of the economy on online enrollments?

-- Is online learning strategic?

-- What disciplines are best represented online?

The complete report is available at http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/staying_the_course.pdf

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is a consortium of institutions and organizations committed "to help learning organizations continually improve quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines." Sloan-C is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more information, go to http://www.sloan-c.org/

The Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College (Wellesley, MA, USA) "conducts regional, national, and international research projects, including survey design, sampling methodology, data integrity, statistical analyses and reporting." For more information, go to http://www3.babson.edu/eship/aboutblank/

......................................................................

STUDY OF ASYNCHRONOUS AND SYNCHRONOUS E-LEARNING METHODS

"The debate about the benefits and limitations of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning seems to have left the initial stage, in which researchers tried to determine the medium that works 'better' -- such studies generally yielded no significant differences. Consequently, instead of trying to determine the best medium, the e-learning community needs an understanding of when, why, and how to use different types of e-learning."

In "Asynchronous and Synchronous E-Learning" (EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 31, no. 4, October–December 2008), Stefan Hrastinski writes on the "benefits and limitations of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning." He provides useful tables comparing the two to help instructors understand when, why, and how to use these delivery modes.

The paper is available at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0848.pdf (PDF format) and http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/AsynchronousandSynchronou/47683 (HTML format).

EDUCAUSE Quarterly, The IT Practitioner's Journal [ISSN 1528-5324] is published by EDUCAUSE, which has offices in Boulder, CO, and Washington, DC. Current and past issues are available online at http://www.educause.edu/eq/

See also:

"Exploding the Myths of Synchronous E-Learning" By Clive Shepherd INSIDE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES, November 2008 http://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/magazine/article_full.cfm?articleid=291&issueid=29

"Live events have immediacy, they facilitate networking, they act as targets by which activities must be completed, and they're simpler to design and support."

Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous learning are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

......................................................................

"ACADEMIA.EDU" NETWORKING SITE

Earlier this fall, a team of people from Oxford, Stanford, and Cambridge Universities launched the website, Academia.edu, which does two things:

-- It shows academics around the world structured in a "tree" format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.

-- It enables academics to see news in their area of research.

The site's founders are hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world, including faculty members, post-docs, graduate students, and independent researchers. People can add their departments and themselves to the tree. Individual entries can list the academic's research interests, papers and books, websites, talks, courses taught, and CVs.

To view the site and to add your entry and/or department, go to http://www.academia.edu/

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Bob Jensen's Guides to Online Programs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm

Elite Universities and Professors Partner With Online Corporations
Elite universities and professional schools are scrambling to "leverage their brands" and make extra money through online education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm

Looking at Learning….Again, Part 2 --- http://www.learner.org/resources/series114.html

Rick Hall's Listserv, Archives, and Conferences

A listserv that deals with these distance education courses, development issues, and assessment issues is maintained by Rick Hall at WWWDEV@hermes.csd.unb.ca. . The archives are at http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/wwwdev/logs/. The list is run by Rik Hall at the University of New Brunswick in Canada. Rik also runs the NAWEB conference --- see http://www.unb.ca/web/wwwdev/naweb98/

Top Education Technology Links

The Web of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

EdWeb

Sloan-C Catalog of On-Line Educational Programs The Sloan ALN Consortium Catalog is a compilation of on-line degree and certification programs offered by universities, colleges, and community colleges who are members of the Sloan Consortium. http://www.sloan-c.org/catalog

Asynchronous Learning Networks publications:

JALN: Journal of ALN

ALN Magazine

Publishing Guidelines

Abstract Submission for JALN or ALN Magazine

On-going Reviews of ALN Activities

Adult Education: In the News :

ADEC --- http://www.adec.edu /

ADEC is:
an international consortium of state universities and land grant institutions providing high quality and economic distance education programs and services via the latest and most appropriate information technologies. Primary emphasis is on programs relating to:

Food and Agriculture
Children, Youth and Families
Community/Economic Development
Distance Education & Technology
Environment and Natural Resources
Nutrition and Health
Others

Asynchronous Learning Networks home page --- http://www.aln.org/index.htm

Bob Jensen's Bookmark Links (http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm#Top1)

Links to Online Courses and Programs

Online Paradigm Shift in Education
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Hundreds of links to international online training and education programs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm

Below is an older listing (some links are now broken)

Prestige Universities

Stanford's ADEPT --- http://ww.stanford.edu/history/fulldesc.html
Duke's GEMBA --- http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/gemba.htmlhttp://www.fuqua.duke.edu/gemba.html
Columbia's Morningside Ventures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm#Education
State Universities (e.g., Penn State, UCLA, etc.) --- 75% of all universities by 12/31/2000

Prestige Universities and Corporate Partnerships

UNext --- http://www.unext.com/
(Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Stanford, and London School of Econ.)
Pensare --- http://www.pensare.com/
(Duke and Harvard)

Corporations Serving Up Credit and Certificate Courses

University Access --- http://www.universityaccess.com/
eCollege --- http://www.ecollege.com/
Cyberclass --- http://www.hgcorp.com/cyberclass/
Click2Learn --- http://www.click2learn.com/
Milken Educator Virtual Workspace --- http://www.mevw.org/
Zenzabar --- http://www.jenzabar.com/
~~McGraw-Hill World University and NRI~~
~~California Virtual University~~

CLASSNET http://www.macatawa.org/~minicom/ (Note that this URL is incorrect in the Syllabus article.)
e-Education Software http://www.e-education.com/
FirstClass Collaborative Classroom http://www.softarc.com/
Fortres Grand Historian http://www.fortres.com/ (Note that there is only one "s" in Fortres.)
InterMapper http://www.dartmouth.edu/netsoftware/intermapper/
LabExpert http://www.altiris.com/
NetOp School http://207.36.107.193/
Novell ManageWise http://education.novell.com/
Thompson world Class Learning http://www.worldclasslearning.com/
Timbuktu Pro http://www.netopia.com/
UniLearn.net Campus Solution www.embanet.com
VistaCompass http://www.vistainc.com/
WinShield http://www.citadel.com/

Online Universities

University of Phoenix --- http://www.phoenix.edu/
Western Governors University --- http://www.wgu.edu
Open University --- http://oubs.open.ac.uk/
Jones International University --- http://www.jonesinternational.edu/
Frederick Taylor University --- http://www.ftu.edu/
University of Northern Washington --- http://www.unw.edu/
University of Asia --- http://www.uniasia.edu/
Many others --- http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Distance_Learning/Colleges_and_Universities/

Graduate Programs

General Electric, Motorola, AT&T and 1,600 other onsite and online corporate-managed programs
University Access --- http://www.universityaccess.com/
All India Institute Of Management Studies - offers management diploma courses through correspondence.
Athabasca University - MBA program offering lessons in disk format and electronic learning systems on-line.
Athabasca University Centre for Innovative Management - MBA program offering lessons in disk format and electronic learning systems on-line.
Auburn University Graduate Outreach Program - offers video-based graduate degree programs in engineering and business.
Colorado State University College of Business
Frederick Taylor University - offers distance learning undergraduate and graduate degree programs in management and business administration.
Heriot-Watt University - self-paced, independent study, MBA program. No GMAT or Bachelor's degree required.
Indiana Wesleyan University - a 46 credit degree with only two 3-day on-site sessions.
Keller Graduate School of Management Online Educational Center
Open University Business School, The - provider of distance management education.
Rushmore University
Sheffield Hallam University - Master of Business Administration in finance; information technology, human resource, or general management; marketing; and management consultancy.
University of Asia - offers bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees in international business via distance learning.
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
University of Northern Washington
University of Texas at Dallas - MIMS - Masters of International Management Studies. Offering distance learning and internat'l business.
University of Wisconsin - Whitewater - offers an online MBA program.
Western Carolina University - offers an online masters degree program in project management.
Others --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Ways to Avoid the Disadvantages of Asynchronous Learning Modules and Courses

Checklist of Hypermedia Designs for Learning &Education

http://www.people.memphis.edu/~dspice/7120/acct7120.html

Appendix 2

Messages About ALN Courses

An Online Course in Accounting Theory

University of Wisconsin

From the University of Wisconsin
Distance Education Clearinghouse --- http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

The Distance Education Clearinghouse is a comprehensive and widely recognized Web site bringing together distance education information from Wisconsin, national, and international sources. New information and resources are being added to the Distance Education Clearinghouse on a continual basis.

The Clearinghouse is managed and maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Extension, in cooperation with its partners and other University of Wisconsin institutions.

Jensen Comment
This site has glossaries and many links to other distance education sites.

Bob Jensen's links to distance education sites are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

An Online Course From the Harvard Law School

Some leading universities are commencing to experiment with online courses available to the general public. The following email message discusses an experimental online course from the Harvard Law School:

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is offering a new experimental online course open to the public. Professor William W. Fisher will moderate the cybercourse on "Intellectual Property in Cyberspace."

Fisher, an expert in copyright, patent, and trademark law, says the course will "address the controversial and volatile question of who should own what on the Internet." Among the topics the course will consider are: How should Internet domain names be assigned? Should creators of material posted on the Net be able to object when their creations are mangled or misrepresented? How should the law deal with situations in which multiple authors contribute to the creation of material on the Net? Should Internet service providers be liable for copyright infringement when they unwittingly carry copyrighted materials without the permission of their owners?

Fisher and a team of Harvard Law School Teaching Fellows have developed six week-long modules designed to expose students to the latest court decisions, legislation and scholarship on intellectual property issues raised by the emergence of the Internet. Students will present and refine their own views on these issues by participating online in a variety of virtual seminars and threaded conferences. The course is the second in a series of online courses to be offered by the Berkman Center, and has been made possible by a donation from the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr LLP.

"The course is part of our ongoing effort to learn more about how the Internet can best facilitate distance learning and community-building, and how Internet teaching techniques can substantively augment more traditional pedagogy," says Professor Charles Nesson, Director of the Berkman Center. Jonathan Zittrain, Executive Director of the Center, adds, "As pragmatists, we want to find out which software and hardware tools are likely to make teaching easier and more powerful, not more time-consuming and frustrating."

The course is free and open to the public, but the total number of registrants is limited. No credits or certificates will be offered. The course is not part of the Harvard Law School academic curriculum, and phone inquiries should not be directed to the Law School registrar's office; rather, more information can be found on the Berkman Center web site, http://cyber.harvard.edu, or the course web site at http://property.berkmancenter.org. Registration begins on March 25 and the course will last until the middle of May.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School charts, and in some ways attempts to shape, the explosive development of the globally networked environment (a.k.a. cyberspace). The Center's philosophy is that in order to understand this new environment one must actually build out into it, a form of self-active study.

Source: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School Contact: Donna Wentworth, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 617-495-7547 --

Thanks to my student for making me aware of this program. His name is Joshua Miller and he briefly discusses his experience at taking the course. His web document is at http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/users/jmiller/frame/proj2.htm While Josh was taking my BUSN 2311 Computers in Business Course, he also enrolled in the above Harvard Law School Course.

Click here to read about his experience in this course

An ALN Online Course Sponsored by the American Chemical Society

Hi Ben,

Dr. Ben Plummer telephony: 210 736 7384 Trinity University FAX: 210 736 7569 Department of Chemistry email: bplummer@trinity.edu San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

What is interesting about your message is that this online course is "sponsored" by the American Chemical Society. That must lend the course a considerable amount of prestige.

I am adding your message to my Working Paper 255. I doubt that it will be long until my main academic society of interest, The American Accounting Association, will be sponsor online courses. However, my AAA is not yet as far along as your ACS.

Thank you for this message about a new chemistry course online. This fits in with the general theme of my Asynchronous Learning Network trends document.

I have long contended that elite universities, along with many other universities, will soon be providing ALN courses for other universities to fit into curricula. What I envision is that local university faculty will handle the ALN messaging of "local" students and monitor the examinations even though the course is given online from an external host.

Thanks,

Bob

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob> http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration Trinity.University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200 Voice: 210-736-7347 Fax: 210-736-8134

Original Message-----

From: Benjamin Plummer [SMTP:BPlummer@trinity.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 1998 9:43 AM
To: rjensen Subject: On-Line Course: Pharmaceuticals, Their Discovery, Regulation and Bob, Another interesting development from our professional society for on-line learning.

Ben

>From: "Dr. Jim Beard" (jbeard@catawba.edu) >Organization: Catawba College >To: cur-l@mcs.anl.gov
>Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:39:21 EST5EDT
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Subject: On-Line Course: Pharmaceuticals, Their Discovery, Regulation and >Priority: normal >Sender: owner-cur-l@mcs.anl.gov
>Precedence: bulk
> · Pharmaceuticals, Their Discovery, Regulation and Manufacture · OLCC-3 >

· This is an invitation to register your school for the On-Line Chemistry Course for Upper Division Chemistry Students (Prerequisite - one year of organic chemistry) to be held during the Fall term of 1998. The on-line activities will be scheduled for September 14 to November 25, 1998. The title of the course will be "Pharmaceuticals, Their Discovery, Regulation and Manufacture."

The course is sponsored by the American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Education's Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE). In this course, the Internet will be used for discussions among students (student Listserv and WebBoard), faculty (faculty Listserv and WebBoard) and experts, all from around the world.

Topics may include but not necessarily be limited to: > · 1. Drug discovery including computer-aided design, combinatorial · chemistry and other, earlier strategies > · 2. Development of clinically useable drugs including optimization of · novel lead structures and assessment of pharmacodynamics, safety and · efficacy of promising drug candidates > · 3. "Case studies" of the development and use of certain classes of · widely used drugs including analgesics, antidepressants, · anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, AIDS and anti-cancer compounds > · 4. The FDA approval and FDA regulated testing process

Process and Content Related Goals of the Pharmaceuticals Course > · 1. To provide an opportunity for students to investigate · frequently used processes for discovery and manufacture of · pharmaceuticals used as drugs for man and other animals > · 2. To provide the opportunity for students to gain an understanding of · the general procedures for drug testing, its limitations, analysis, · use and regulation > · 3. To provide an electronic forum which permits students to · interact with professionals who are involved with · the processes in #1 and #2 > · 4. To provide an environment in which students will interact · locally and at a distance to do brain-storming, data-gathering, data · analysis and problem-solving > · 5. To provide a forum for discovery of and discussion of industry's · interaction with its regulatory, client and physical environment · (including such items as government inspections, user complaints and · hazardous waste handling

Responsibilities of Participants: > · Students will participate in collaborative learning assignments where · they can practice division of labor, teamwork, and individual · responsibility. The Listservs and WebBoards will be used for the · discussion of concepts and processes. > · Instructors at local sites will guide "traditional" literature searches · as well as on-line data-gathering. On-line, students will be guided by · faculty and each other in their exploration of the content of this · course. On-line questions from faculty will sometimes require critical · thinking about industrial procedures in terms of a personal values · framework > · It is the responsibility of each participating institution to register · students and to provide college credit for the course.

The role of the · OLCC organizing committee and the CCCE is limited to assistance in · organizing and administering electronic aspects of the course. The · American Chemical Society will neither provide credit nor assess any · fees. It is suggested that students receive three semester hours of · credit for the course. It is the responsibility of each local faculty · member to assign grades to their students. It is anticipated that a · national electronic evaluation will be administered. However, local · faculty are encouraged to provide an evaluative process also. > >For further information about previous on-line courses like this, see >the Web Pages for OLCC-1 at http://www.py.iup.edu/college/chemistry/chem-course/webpage.html and additional information and evaluations of OLCC-1 at http://www.clarkson.edu/~rosen2/olcc.html.

Further information can >also be obtained by contacting the course coordinator: > · Dr. Lindy Harrison · Department of Chemistry · York College of Pennsylvania · York, PA 17405-7199 · 717-846-7788 X1210 · aharriso@eagle.ycp.edu

Those interested in participating in this OLCC-3 course during the >Fall of 1998 should complete the pre-registration form and send >it to the OLCC-3 registration coordinator, Dr. James Beard, e-mail: >jbeard@catawba.edu. > >*********************************************************** · Pharmaceuticals, Their Discovery, Regulation and Manufacture > · Fall 1998
> · On-Line Course Registration Form > >RESPONDENTS ARE ASKED TO EXPAND SPACES AS NECESSARY TO ANSWER >QUESTIONS. > >Institution: > >Mailing Address: > >City: > >State: > >Primary Course Instructor: > >Email Address: > >Business Phone: > >FAX Number: > >Home Phone (Optional>:> >Field(s> of Interest: > >Other Instructor(s> Involved (if any>: > >Email Address(es>: > >Business Phone Number(s>: > >Field(s> of Interest:
> >Estimated Number of Students: > >Fall 1998 Calendar: > · Semesters or Quarters: > · Beginning Date: > · Fall Break (other than Thanksgiving, if any>: > · Last Regular Class Day Before Exams: > >Indicate the type and approximate size of your institution. > >Large University ___ Mid-Size Univeristy ___ > >Small University or College ___ Other ___ (Explain> > >Public Institution ___ Private Institution ___ > >Less than 1000 undergraduate students ___ > >1000 to 5000 undergraduate students ___ > >5000 to 10000 undergraduate students ___ > >Over 10000 undergraduate students ___ > >All students will be expected to have access to E-mail and the >World Wide Web. > >What type of E-mail system do you have? > >What web browser do you use? > >Return this form to (jbeard@catawba.edu>.

Online Biology: Email Message From Brad Stith

From: Brad Stith <bstith@carbon.cudenver.edu
Subject: online courses

Sender: owner-cur-l@mcs.anl.gov

Our Biology department held a meeting to discuss our participation in the "Online course" program (a program that, over the past few years, has grown to involve over 1000 students per semester). I would like to summarize the meeting and ask for input from CUR members

Main points:

1. three teachers (biology of cancer, cell biology, genetics; see

http://www.cuonline.edu) believe that Online teaching was as rigorous as their in-classroom lecture course (although one teacher had only 3 min of audio per week, the teachers did not feel that they had to use "sound bites" or "dumb down" the course to conform to the online method of presentation). One teacher had both a lecture class and an online class and found that the students in the online class performed as good or better on the same exams.

2. although the initial start up cost is significant, an online course offers the potential

for large profit for the university. At present, our online course instructors are often not tenure-track and are paid very little per course (and the university does not have to provide classroom, etc.). This may mean that students will not even appear on campus (will they prefer online courses to lecture classes?), the role of faculty and the structure of departments will be redefined (one of our future instructors is located half-way across the country). In the opinion of one teaching advisor (obtained after the meeting), the online courses "will not end" lectures as we know them, but is merely another tool.

3. the updating of an online course requires a significant amount of time yet there is

no money to support this maintenance (there is extra start up money available). In a subsequent conversation with experienced online teachers, the belief was that there was more "one on one" interaction between teacher and student (usually by email) and that larger classes literally "max-out" the teacher’s time. Biology is currently limiting online enrollment to about 22-24 students.

The present system requires that the online teacher scan in all images on their own and forward these images and text files to the online administrators. There were still many technical problems and concerns. Concerns: confusion in operating procedures, and that one cannot tell who is still in the class.

4. The chat room was not successful in the experience of the teachers. If more

than a few people were involved, the conversation became difficult to follow and lead. Large courses of 50 to 300 students may not be able to utilize this method of communicating with students. Posting of threaded discussions (email) were found to be valuable.

5. As active learning (students working in lecture halls in groups to answer

questions raised during lecture) is currently emphasized yet online learning often means that the student is sitting alone going through written material. In a subsequent discussion, one online teacher requires that students work in teams.

6. The online method requires the teacher to place what is essentially their own

"textbook" online. One advantage of online teaching would be that if a student needed to review basic material for earlier required courses, the teacher could put in a "click here for background info..." This would require immense effort and the course would (like lecture courses) be developed or improved over a period of years.

Dr. Brad Stith
Associate Professor
University of Colorado-Denver
Biology 171
PO Box 173364 (for FED EXP:1224 Fifth St.)
Denver, CO 80217
tele: 303-556-3371; fax: 303-556-4352
bstith@carbon.cudenver.edu NEW web site: http://www.cudenver.edu/~bstith

The Amazing Way Children Can Organize to Teach Each Other

"Jaw-dropping: a talk about "lightweight learning," by Sugata Mitra at Google's London office, Schmoller, November 2009 ---
http://fm.schmoller.net/2009/10/jawdropping-a-talk-by-sugata-mitra-at-googles-london-office.html

Sugata is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and he will be one of the three keynote speakers at the 2010 ALT Conference between 7 and 9 September 2010. [Disclosure - I work for ALT part time.] Since the late 1990s Sugata Mitra he has been running empirical experiments to see what happens when children are able to use an Internet connected PC, usually in a public space, and always on the basis of several sharing the PC, usually in groups involving a wide age range. Most but not all of his experiments have been in areas of poverty, with much of the research having taken place in impoverished areas of India.

Here are some of Sugata's findings, some of which are covered in Remote Presence: Technologies for ‘Beaming’ Teachers Where They Cannot Go, from the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence [680 kB PDF], as well as in the 2007 TED talk at the foot of this piece. What follows is a lightly and probably too quickly cleaned up version of the notes I took during Sugata's talk.

Groups of children can learn to use computers and the Internet, without the support of adults.

Over 300 children can become computer literate in 3 months with 1 public access computer.

The computer needs to be in a safe public place that the children associate with safety, free time, and play.

Children will self-organise their learning. Mitra "does not know how this happens".

Alongside becoming computer literate, the children improve their maths and english, improve their social values, get better at collaborating, improve their school attendance, reduce their drop out rates.

Depending on how the computer is set up, and the software and content it has, Mitra has observed and tested children doing various things including teaching themselves functional English, algebra, biotechnology, and improving their pronunciation of English.

These results are replicable, in many different parts of the world where "hole in the wall" experiments have been carried out; and such "learning stations" can be provided in countries like India at an all in cost of around 0.03USD per child per day.

Some readers will be asking themselves "is this relevant to education in countries like the UK?". Yes, according to Sugata, describing a February 2008 experiment he conducted in Gateshead, in the North East of England, where ten year old children (who each had a laptop, but who seemed not to be benefiting) were put in groups of four, with one laptop per group, and with ground rules encouraging them to reach consensus and to listen out for progress on neighbouring tables, and to claim it as their own. (Sugata quipped "that is how scientific research works...") In 20 minutes (45 for the slowest) the children had solved several questions from the GCSE chemistry examination (normally taken by a minority learners of 16), by collaborative learning using Google, Wikipedia, Ask Jeeves, Ask, Answerbag, etc.

Tests of these children several months later showed that their learning (but their understanding?) was retained. Why? According to Sugata, having to learn collaboratively and to reach consensus is the key to the success of this approach.