Held 21-22 August 2000
Papers Presented at
the 2nd National NADEOSA Conference
Held 21-22 August 2000
Author:
J.C. Cronjé
Title:
The Architecture of Digital Universities
Abstract:
More and more universities
are turning to the Internet as a conduit for failitating learning. At one end of the scale
are ad-hoc e-mail between students and lecturers, discussion groups, bulletin boards and
web-sites supporting classroom work. At the other end is fully-fledged course delivery,
learning guidance and examination through custom delivery software. This paper consders
the underlying thinking behind these methods of course support and delivery and then
discusses the various generic tools that are used. Finally a case study is given,
describing an in-service teacher education program of the University of Pretoria it then
draws general conclusions and makes recommendations in terms of teacher training via the
Internet.
More and more universities are turning to the Internet as a conduit for failitating learning. At one end of the scale are ad-hoc e-mail between students and lecturers, discussion groups, bulletin boards and web-sites supporting classroom work. At the other end is fully-fledged course delivery, learning guidance and examination through custom delivery software. This paper consders the underlying thinking behind these methods of course support and delivery and then discusses the various generic tools that are used. Finally a case study is given, describing an in-service teacher education program of the University of Pretoria it then draws general conclusions and makes recommendations in terms of teacher training via the Internet.
Introduction
This paper discusses the various elements that make up a "digital university" and considers the activities facilitated by each element. The various elements of a digital university replace or augment the corresponding functions within a traditional brick and mortar university and sometimes come very close to miming the real thing. It is not surprising then, that what happens in a digital university mirrors to a large extent the events of the physical ones. With more and more univerisities turning to the Internet to enhance learning, a new way of teaching is beginning to evolve both in terms of what happens in the real classroom and what happens in the digital classroom. After a cursory review of the literature concerning the context, possibilities and constraints of email and the World Wide Web in adult education, a comparison is given of a physical and digital universities. Then follows a case study of how these components are being used in training in-service education students.
The main questions asked during the case study are:
Literature review
This literature review explores the needs of adult learners and needs associated with distance learning. It also considers some of the problems and solutions the Internet has to offer.
Adult learning needs in a changing world
International trends
The international move from an industrial society to an information society has given rise to a shift of emphasis in various fields, as summarised by Reigeluth (1996).
| Table 1: A shift to an information age. (Reigeluth, 1996) | |
| INDUSTRIAL AGE | INFORMATION AGE |
| Standardisation | Customisation |
| Centralised control | Autonomy with accountability |
| Adversarial relationships | Co-operative relationships |
| Autocratic decision making | Shared decision making |
| Compliance | Initiative |
| Conformity | Diversity |
| One-way communications | Networking |
| Compartmentalism | Holism |
| Parts-oriented | Process-oriented |
| Teacher as "king" | Learner (customer) as "king" |
National Needs
The South African Green Paper on Higher Education Transformation (1996) aims to bring higher education in line with world trends by calling for the following.
A synthesis of adult learning needs and the
direction of post-secondary education as spelt out in the South African Green Paper on
Higher Education Transformation (1996) shows how closely the two are related.
GRAPHIC
It is clear that traditional contact education cannot address all these issues. Universities are therefore turning to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to explore the possibilities offered by such technology in overcoming some of the barriers traditionally associated with distance education.Needs associated with distance learning
Galusha (1998) categorises the following "Barriers to learning in distance education". The most important needs associated with distance learning is the need to overcome the barriers involved. Any digital university would do well to design around eliminating as many as possible of the barriers listed below.
Student barriers
These include financial, family and work-related barriers, as well as lack of support both from family and friends, employers and colleagues and teachers (Galusha, 1998).
Faculty barriers
The most important of thse is the lack of staff training. A further barrier is the attitude of the institution to distance lecturers who are sometimes seen as less prominent as their contact-teachin peers. (Galusha 1998)
Organizational barriers
The first organizational barrier is lack of funds. There are three important cost factors: Initial costs, maintenance costs and upgrade costs.
The second problem lies in the technology itself. Platforms could be unstable or incompatible.
Course barriers
Distance courses are often regarded as inferior (Galusha, 1998). What often makes them inferior is poor design. Often the materials used for contact teaching are simply converted into electronic form. This way no value is added.
The Internet: problems and solutions
This section considers the problems and possibilities of the Internet. Aspects include recruiting of new students, administration, production, storage and presentation of coursework, interaction with students and other services. The success of using the Internet in this role, however, depends not so much on the technology as on the design (Clark, 1994). The designer, in turn, needs to consider the possibilities and constraints of the medium (Reiser, 1994) in order to exploit its possibilities and work around its restraints
Attraction
In order to attract users to a new medium an air of familiarity needs to be established. This is best done through the use of visual metaphors. Metaphors draw on models to interpret the world and make related connections that may not be obvious (Viau 1994). For this reason many digital campuses mimic their physical counterparts in various ways. Metaphors based on familiar concepts, e.g. books and desktops and even classrooms help bring familiarity to new and potentially confusing systems (Ebersole 1997)
Administration
In a digital classroom the presenter often cannot "see" the learners and does not know if they are still on the course, or if they are experiencing problems (Cronjé 1997). The flexibility of asynchronicity results in procrastination when students are too busy to log on regularly, which can result in falling behind with respect to deadlines (Hiltz and Wellman 1997). If WWW courses replace or reduce contact time, they should provide for the handling of course and learning management issues like clarification of objectives and available resources. These are usually clarified by questions or discussions in more traditional, face-to-face learning situations (Draper 1997).
Materials
Course materials
There is a temptation for course designers simply to convert their existing notes into HTML format and to post them onto the Web. This ignores the principles of instructional design as set out by Merrill (1991):
Other providers of on-line education experiment with solutions such as Java and Shockwave that allow interaction, but remains contrived and slow (Foks 1995).
Library materials
As an information repository the Web has too much, rather than too little information. Laurillard (1993) concurs with Merrill (1991) that learning is more than aimless exploration or simple retrieval of information. Construction of learning is more than recombining associations between bits of information and mere quantity of references may not necessarily correlate with quality of analysis. To counteract information and sensory overload and assist users to discriminate between reliable and unreliable information on the Web, attention needs to be given to information literacy (Underwood and Karelse 1996). Digital campuses therefore often contain annotated collections of links to other sites of interest.
Presentation
Web-based classrooms do not have lecturers who do stand-up training. The lecturers only "appear" as the narrator does in a novel. Not only is the "appearance" of the lecturer different, but also their function. Merrill (1991:24) argues that, "organisation during learning aids in later retrieval of information, and elaborations generated at the time of learning new information can facilitate retrieval" (my emphasis). This implies that it is not the course presenter who should be organising the information, but the learner. The role of the presenter is to guide learners in the process of organising their learning, while at the same time allowing them to elaborate. This calls for a much more open design. The learner needs to be given more control.
Use of the Web is likely to result in increased student participation in the production of course materials that improve and expand through their cumulative effort (Donahoe 1997). The exposure to growing databases provided by the Web and increased interaction among learners will encourage constructivist and collaborative work with learners contributing to the pool of knowledge (Donahoe 1997).
Interaction
In contrast with traditional lectures, communication via the Internet is usually asynchronous. That is to say the transmitting and receiving of the message takes place at different times. Both partners in the process need not be engaged at the same time. In essence this means that the learners can schedule their own learning time. Bill Gates (1995:66) indicates a general human preference for asynchronous interaction: "It is human nature to find ways to convert synchronous communication into asynchronous forms. Before the invention of writing, 5 000 years ago, the only form of communication was the spoken word and audiences had to be in the presence of the speaker or they missed his message." This means that communication takes place mainly though pre-designed web sites and e-mail.
The following advantages and disadvantages of electronic mail (Cronje, 1996) need to be considered.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Quick delivery Reliable delivery Accurate (digital) transfer Inexpensive Easy to append and forward Easy to store & sort |
Possible misinterpretation Lack of non-verbal cues High initial cost Maintenance, upgrade and training costs |
According to Laurillard (1996) tutorials conducted via ICT result in a higher proportion of student time to tutor time compared with contributions in traditional face-to-face tutorials because individuals have more opportunity to contribute as the asynchronous text-based medium extends the moment to contribute. Students can return to the topic after they have given it thought.
The use of web-pages to support electronic mail brings the following advantages and disadvantages (Cronjé, 1996)
| Table 4: Advantages and disadvantages of Web pages | |
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Contains much useful information Multimedia capability Can store large amounts of data Easy remote access Always available Extensive search capabilities |
Static - page turner Slow - hungry for bandwidth Searching and browsing is often overwhelming Not everyone has access Non-interactive |
Other services
In addition to the disadvantages of the WWW and Email as listed above, Hiltz and Wellman (1997) suggest that ICT is useful for instrumental relationships rather than social supportive ones. They (1997) mention some other limitations of ICT.
It therefore becomes necessray to create a supportive atmosphere by encouraging co-operation in a virtual environment.
In this way ‘Virtuality’ may also develop an element of ‘negotiated reality’ (Turoff 1997: 40). The users of the computerized system negotiate an agreed upon reality. Thus a virtual classroom might emulate an actual classroom if it becomes an on-line learning environment to facilitate the accomplishment of learning goals as well as a community where members can exchange information, provide and receive support and develop a sense of belonging, (Hiltz and Wellman 1997).
Educational Technology: The Digital Campus
Digital campuses mirror actual campuses even in their development. Firstly there is the organic campus that has grown over time to accommodate changing needs over the years. It has little dead-end streets and akwardly designed buildings squeezed into the available space and modified beyond recognition as their initial purpose has become redundant and they have been put to different uses by subsequent generations. The second are the designer campuses - mass produced and modular, with standardized structures that can easily be modified to cover a wide variety of needs.
Digital organic campuses are typically designed by ad-hoc teams of enthusiastic lecturers and computer staff and the development is stopped as soon as the functionality is bearable. "Modern" digital campuses are shells, designed by software companies and filled by lecturers working from instructional design blueprints.
When, one wants to design a learning task where the objective is the linking of knowledge and navigating through information, the Internet becomes the ideal (virtual) learning environment.
Kozma (1987:22) says that "to be effective, a tool for learning must closely parallel the learning process; and the computer, as an information processor, could hardly be better suited for this".
It would seem that thie various digital campuses, e.g. Lotus Learning Space, WebCT, E-Groups, etc. all try to accommodate the aspects mentioned in the literature study. Regardless of their nature, be it organic or modular, the architectural features shared by all these institutions include a main entrance, an administration block, lecture halls, a library, anciliary services and recreation areas.
The Entrance
The main entrance serves both to attract visitors (and therefore potential students) and to conrol access. People who arrive at the entrance are usually categorised as staff, students or visitors, and on that basis gain different levels of access to the campus.
Administration
The two main aspects to be administered are finances and student records. A sophisticated system is reequired to allow these two elements to meet, so that a service is provided only to paid-up students. Other aspects that require administration, of course are the staff, the alumni and the campus itself.
Lecture halls
Virtual lecture halls contain much the same elements than do actual lecture halls. Staying with the metaphor of the actual classroom these could be grouped as boards, desks, equipment and lockers.
Boards
Classrooms have chalkboards, bulletinboards and posters. Chalkboards are for real-time interaction. Bulletin boards are for a-synchronous interaction. Posters are for stable content.
Desks
There are two types of desks: Teacher’s desk and Learners’ desks. Desks form the principal site of operation. At the desks are information processors, data resources and communication facilities. In a "real" classroom these are pencils, textbooks and the voice and ears. In a virtual classroom these are word processors, databases, spreadsheets and graphic packages; electronic data, links to websites; and e-mail.
Lockers
Lockers contain items that do not necessarily form the main stream activities in the classroom. This includes hobbies, previous work and bits of ueseless, if sometimes humorous information. Also in the locker would be prizes of any sort.
In an actual classroom, the equipment in the lockers would be protractors, stencils, compasses, etc. In a virtual classroom they are graphic manipulation tools and website generating tools.
Library
The library (also called the resource center) could contain actual documents, or links to other sites. The other sites could simply be information sites or they could link to on-line books or journals.
Anciliary Services
Anciliary services include aspects such as academic support services who help students with academic, social and financial aspects. These sercivices are sometimes extended to include employment agencies, student exchange programs, etc.
Recreation areas
Recreation areas could be individual and cooperative. In a brick-and-mortar campus this could range from benches under trees to coffee shops and cinemas. In virtual campuses these could amount to "arcade games", "chat rooms", etc.
Didactics: Teaching and learning in a digital classroom - A case study
Context: The University of Pretoria's "Telematic Education" programme
The University of Pretoria uses the term "Telematic education" (Tele: over a distance; -matic: by means of) referring to the delivery of learning materials by the integration of:
Paper-based courses are delivered to some students, franchised out to four off-campus institutions.
The University has produced 15 multimedia titles in subjects as diverse as Religious studies, classical music, nutrition and electricity and electronics.
The Virtual campus is based on a Web-CT platform, and is used for a number of programmes, including
The virtual campus allows students to do all their studying through the Internet and World Wide Web. The Virtual Campus Software provides for integrated administrative services, such as on-line application, registration, enrolment and payment for programmes; as well as web-based courseware and instruction, including tutoring, assignments, assessment and accreditation. Students also have access to administrative academic services such as student records and test/examination results and communication facilities allowing for one-to-one interaction between the lecturer and student, as well as between fellow students. Students also have access to the academic information service that provides electronic journals and management of library requests.
Currently 1600 students are are registered on the system and it is enivsaged that 150 modules will be in place by 2000.
The University is in the process of developing six remote learning centers where students can access the WWW. Obviously home access is available.
The web-based campus grew out of very modest beginnings that are described below. The RBO880 Virtual classroom served as a pilot project in which a number of questions were asked that were particularly relevant to a large first-world style university in a country with a strong third world component. The questions asked in studying the events in the virtual classroom are repeated below.
The RBO880 Virtual Classroom
The first web-based course to be presented at the University of Pretoria of took place in January 1997. The situation in which this pilot study took place was that of distance education rather than mass education. There were only fifteen participants, but they were dispersed from Pietersburg in the north, to Cape Town in the south, creating radius of approximately 1000km around Pretoria.. The students were second-year members of the Masters’ Degree programme in Computer-Assisted Education. The complete curriculum can be found at http://www.up.ac.za/academic/education/didactics/general/medcaecurriculum.html.
All the participants were highly computer literate but of diverse Internet literacy. One student had built up an extensive electronic network, mainly through electronic mail, listservers and bulletin boards. Others had "surfed" the World Wide Web extensively and were familiar with search engines, etc. Some students, however, were connected to the Internet on the first day of the course. What follows now is a description of the RBO880 classroom in terms of the campus components listed earlier. Although what is described here amounts to a classroom rather than a campus, it shares a number of campus qualities, since this was the University’s only virtual learning space. Over a period of three years ten other classrooms were added, resulting in an almost fully-fledged virtual campus. Later the University used it as a model to develop a Web-CT-based Virtual Campus.
The Entrance
Initially the "Main Entrance" to the RBO classroom consisted of a single text-only HTML document called "Weclome.html". The document can be viewed at http://hagar.up.ac.za/rbo/welcome.html. This document welcomed students to the classroom, explained to them what would be expected of them and giving them a link to the virtual classroom. The "keys" to the classroom took the form of a separate email message giving the complete URL of "Welcome.html" as well as the password with which students were able to upload documents to their own "desks". Security was established by assigning different directories for lecture materials and strudent work. Students could only access their directories and not those that formed the actual classroom. The only exception was that the picture of the blackboard was stored in the root of the student directory and not in the classroom directory so that students could alter it at will. A security hazard was that students could accidently or deliberately erase each other’s work.
Administration
The administration of the original classroom was primitive. All the administration was done by the course leader using MS Access where necessary and then cutting and pasting data into a freeware HTML editor called AOLPress. The instructor kept track of the students by ticking off their progress on a paper-based checklist.
Lecture halls
The lecture hall or "Virtual classroom" itself was the main attraction of the course. It followed very closely the metaphor of an actual classroom. It can be viewed at http://hagar.up.ac.za/rbo/classrm.html.
Boards
In the front of the classroom is a chalkboard on which students are encouraged to add their own graffiti. Clicking on the board will reveal the objectives of the course. The "pinboard" to the left is a link to the roster containing deadlines and to the right a list of individual and co-operative tasks.
Desks
The Teacher’s desk takes students to the istructor’s home page where they can find a mailto link to the instructor, as well as biographical information and a whole collection of links that were of interest to the instuctor, regardless of whether they are of any use to the students. The link to "C@tts" calls up the home page of the alumni association and the resource cupboard contains links to HTML editors, graphics editors and useful websites.
The learners’ desks were originally all identical. Learners were instructed to customize their desks by creating their own picture and then "filling" the desk by creating a website containing
"Your ears" was the most important feature of the virtual classroom. A serious shortcoming of the World Wide Web is the static nature of a web-page. It is always presented in a completed state (despite the "under construction" signs that often appear on them). this means that another channel needs to be created for ephemeral communication. In this case a listserver was set up. It was done in such a way that a reply to any message to the list would automatically be sent to all course participants. In this way a discussion group was formed that led to great interactivity between students and the instructor.
Lockers
In the "Resources" cupboard students could find links to a free web-page authoring tool, AOLPress, and various shareware utilities with which to create and edit graphics, upload their web pages to their "desks", compress large files, etc.
Library
The library contained about 50 links to useful websites. These were categorised according to the various syllabus themes. The links appeared in two documents. They were listed directly after each learning task so that students could get to work immediately, and they were listed alphabetically in the form of a biliography.
Anciliary Services
The most significant anciliary service provided in this course were in the form of e-mail listservers. Students were encouraged to join a free e-mail based web-orientation course where they learnt how to create HTML documents, how to use search faciliteis, etc. They were instructed to join an academic listserver, ITForum that held monthly discussions on topics of interest to instructional designers. An incidental anciliary service occured purely by chance as a doctoral student from an overseas universtiy was invited to join the class as an observer. As an outsider she could provide useful insights into what was actually happening in the class. Her knowledge of the internet also enabled her to share useful information with students. As this information came from an outsider, it was perceived by students to be support rather than tuition.
Recreation areas
In the initial classroom recreation took the form of jokes students emailed to each other, or of links to amusing sites that stuents had to add to their desks (their hobbies). In later developments students were encouraged to participate in a virtual carnival and later even a virtual halloween party.
The process
In order to maximise students’ experience of the Internet, they were initially instructed by post to send an electronic message to the course address once they had been connected. Once such as message was received, the student was sent a welcoming note and asked to write a brief curriculum vitae and a statement of intent (What skills do I bring to the course? What do I want to get out of the course?). This document had to be illustrated with "keystroke art". Responses were then forwarded to all subscribers to the course by the listserver.
Once all the students were on board and had published their statements of intent (this took one week), they were instructed to join the listserver ITforum. They were also given the WWW address of the syllabus and study guide. In order to promote some interactivity between the students themselves, they were divided into co-operative learning groups. This information was sent to them in both MSWord6 "doc" format and WordPerfect 5.1 format via an electronic mail attachment and was uuencoded. They had to read their manuals or consult their network administrators to find out how to uudecode the information.
The individual learning task for the course was for each student to read through the prescribed literature and then to design a "sustainable" classroom Internet project which would last three months. Once the proposal had been posted and discussed by the group, they had to execute the project and report what they had learnt. In order to keep students surfing, bonus marks were awarded based on the number of Universal Resource Locators (URL - WWW addresses) they could supply, together with good descriptions of what could be found at the particular site. These URLs were added to the home page on the University’s "Hagar" web server.
Exchange of Expertise: Observation and Reflection:
One of the factors that affected the course positively, and would, of course impact on any results, was the fact that the students knew one another well. They had been divided into co-operative learning groups for the past year, and much effort was made to get them to work together. The result was that almost all of them mentioned in their statements of intent that they were pleased to see who else was on the course. They were looking forward to face to face meetings during the contact tutored modules on other subjects of the course which would occur while this module was in progress. It must be stressed, therefore, that, although no face to face contact was allowed between the students and the instructor, contact between students could not be avoided.
The statements of intent provided valuable insight both in the students’ existing knowledge, and in their creative ability in terms of producing "keystroke art". This also sparked off the first spontaneous discussion, as it had been called "ASCII art" in the initial letter, and Pam was quick to correct this technicality. The second level of discussion followed when Johan brought over a debate from ITforum and expressed his concern about the lack of academic neutrality exhibited by some of the participants who were well respected authors whose articles had been prescribed to the students in previous modules. After some discussion in the electronic "classroom" Johan plucked up enough courage to confront the "gurus" directly on the listserver. Here he received his first lesson in "Netiquette". He had expressed his disgust with the intolerance shown by participants to the listserver - and was promptly asked if this wasn’t intolerant in itself. It was about two days later that Jill and Patsy met via electronic mail and made their meeting public. One responded to a message which the other had posted on ITforum but, instead of replying directly, the reply was posted back to the listserver, and all 600 participants of the forum were treated to this private communication. Surprisingly these were the only large-scale misfortunes suffered during the course. Annette had trouble subscribing to ITforum. After many attempts it was decided that the problem was technical and had to do with software compatibility between her mailer and the listserver software. Eventually email was sent directly to the moderator of the list who subscribed her manually.
The uuencoded document presented a problem for a number of students. The process of extracting it had to be explained a number of times. This is where contact teaching would have made things easy. It would just have been a case of pointing to the right buttons or menus. Most mailers, like Pegasus Mail actually do this automatically as it is extracted, and the students would not know that it had occurred. Panic had set in and, as it was two days before an on-campus session for another subject, they were asked for their response to a suggested face-to-face lecture. Just a few needed that, so we had a five minute discussion instead, during which their fears were alleviated and the wording of the project explained. Most of the students’ problems had to do with the definition of "sustainable". When it was explained to them that the project had to have a life time of at least three months, and had to be more substantial than just an exchange of email (key pals) between learners from various countries, they seemed satisfied.
It was also at this stage that four participants left the course. They had problems with the stability of their Internet connections and did not feel comfortable about continuing while they were not always sure of getting their messages, or being able to access the Web. The lesson learnt here is that the technology needs to be stabilised before the start of the course. Students should not have to get to know the interface at the same time as they have to learn the content. This has important implications in a third world context where users are not likely to be computer literate.
The University network was undergoing upgrading which led to the web server’s being unavailable, much to the disconcertment of students who thought that their own machines had gone wrong. This led to frantic messages being sent both to the "classroom" and to individual members "around the back". Again, in rural communities where communication links may be unstable, this could lead to even more consternation.
Something was beginning to develop which had been anticipated. Students were forming their own support systems independently both of their co-operative learning groups and of the classroom listserver. They were emailing other members and asking help without the knowledge of the rest. This communication is laudable, but the problem was that it was impossible for the researcher to determine its extent. This may well be an area for further research - factors contributing to individual communications outside the electronic classroom.
The initial progress report
With four students having dropped out, and with a disconcerting silence from others, it became necessary to determine how the course was progressing, so two months into the course students were requested to post a status report in which they had to answer to the following
These were the responses:
Are you still on the course?
11 of the original 15 were still on the course.
What are the main problems you experience?
The major problems encountered were
Technical:
Time:
Students worked full time and also followed other modules. One of the problems for remote students was that, while they were in Pretoria doing other contact modules, they were unable to participate in their electronic discussions.
How far is your group with the co-operative project?
The co-operative learning project of two groups disintegrated because of the four who had deserted, and reallocations had to be made. The other groups were on schedule.
How far are you with your individual project?
Individual projects were troubled with time factors, particularly where they were interrupted by student tours or school holidays. Those who had chosen to do surveys as part of their projects had trouble with response times. This led to numerous requests for extension. Extension was not granted, however, as the project actually required students to write a report of what they had learnt. If they were unable to finish their project by the due date, they had to mention in their reports why this had happened, and what they had learnt from it. It must be stressed that the course was about learning, not about finishing a project. The project was a means to an end.
Who is your support system?
The support systems included mainly members of the co-operative groups, but also experienced net users like Pam. Many participants listed members of their families as part of the support, while the Dear Lord and the Doctor also received mention. What became very clear, though, is that the support system was independent of distance. Annette in Pretoria and Pam in Cape Town, formed a support team, as did Johan in Pretoria and Barry Kwadlengezwa.
Rate your perceived learning as a percentage.
Perceived learning ranged from 65% to 1000%, with some students commenting that it was impossible to count perceived learning as a percentage, because they had insufficient criteria. The main problem was that, although they had learnt a great deal, they were only too aware of the amount of learning which they could still do. This was a problem that had been envisaged from the start. With so diverse a student population in terms of previous experience, coupled to so wide an area, it is difficult to set down a fixed set of learning objectives.
What did the students learn?
Apart from achieving the objectives as set out earlier, the students learnt much more in terms of background about the Internet and they did a great deal of meta-learning.
As Annette put it "The more problems you have, the more you have to ask, and the more you learn. Don’t rely on external factors, take the bull by the horns and do it yourself.
Peter felt that we rely too heavily on the reliability of technology. Many hours are spent trying to "restore failed hardware". Nevertheless, the web allows for a great deal of "just in time" learning. Peter felt that the school should dissolve its computer laboratory and rather put computers with Internet access into classrooms allowing learners easier and more relevant access.
The biggest contribution to Jill’s learning was in the form of an extensive network of contacts she built up internationally and in her field. Many of these contacts came in handy in their next module on Adult Education. Students used the Internet to determine who was doing what world-wide.
Pam learnt about the unreliability of the humans on the other side of the Internet. One must make allowances for the fact that some people just don’t read instructions. She also learnt that much of any project, Internet or not, relies on the enthusiasm of participants.
Hermien learnt that much of the success relied on the driving force of the project leader.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the original research questions are re-visited.
Can a "classroom" be successfully simulated on the Internet?
It was quite possible to simulate a "virtual classroom" bearing in mind that "visual cues" were lacking. One of the primary advantages of the discussion group was that as is the case in a real classroom, students could benefit from each other’s questions. In a traditional, postage-driven distance education situation, each student asking the same question would receive an identical, individual reply. Only if a critical number of students have asked the same question, would the question and answer be forwarded to everyone.
The biggest problem in the virtual classroom was the absence of a virtual blackboard. Although it is possible to send straightforward text messages by electronic mail, it is more difficult to send tables and graphics. It is recommended, therefore, that the electronic discussion group be augmented by a web site, which acts as a blackboard.
Will students who have been used to contact teaching adapt to the virtual classroom?
Students adapted quite quickly to the virtual classroom, although they frequently referred to and looked forward to actual face-to-face contact.
In some ways the virtual classroom brought the instructor closer to the students. The instructor is included in the working group, while, in a traditional classroom, the instructor is excluded.
Some factors which need attention though, is the lack of visual feedback. The instructor does not know who is "in the classroom" at any given time. This is why deadlines are important. They form virtual feedback sessions where the instructor learns who is still on board.
To what extent could co-operative work be done over the Internet?
Co-operative learning worked exceptionally well. It helped a great deal in breaking the isolation which students might have felt had they been left to work in isolation. More research is needed as to the nature of the messages which students in co-operative groups send one another, bypassing the discussion forum. Aspects which interfered were time and network stability. Surprisingly distance was not seen as an obstacle to cooperation.
To what extent will technology and technological literacy affect the learning process?
A very stable network and a high degree of technological literacy is essential. All the students who failed to complete the course, did so on account of their unfamiliarity with the technology. Whenever students felt uncomfortable, it was as a result of unstable technology. Although they were burdened with a great deal of work and still had to complete other modules, this did not cause them nearly as much discomfort as did the fact that they could not access the website, or were unable to receive certain messages.
Recommendations
It is essential that students be familiar with the basics of their own mailers, browsers, etc. It may be an idea to start the course with a number of exercises in this respect.
The remote network MUST be stable. It is highly disconcerting for students who are concerned about learning as much as possible, to find themselves let down by technology.
The same goes for the Home network. Moreover, should maintenance or other eventualities render the Home network off line, students should be informed in advance.
Deadlines must be given for every task, and progress should be monitored. One of the reasons for asking for a progress report was that not enough deadlines had been published along the way and there was no way of knowing where each student was.
Co-operative learning works well, particularly in instances where students have had time to build a relationship of trust in the past.
Allowing students to define the scope of their own projects works well. Comments from their peers are valuable. It may be necessary for the mentor to shape the project in terms of the size, as some students overestimate what can be done in three months.
A web site is a good place to store large quantities of information for non-interactive purposes, while creating ownership by allowing students to add their own URLs contributes to the interactivity of a usually passive site.
An on-line discussion group works well particularly when it is augmented by a lively forum such as ITforum. Students may not wish to air their views in public, but they might be prepared to discuss it with their classmates.
Other recommendations from students included calls for:
The key to the success of the project, however, lay in the flexibility of the design, allowing students to do more or less what they wanted to, provided they used the tools which they had to learn to use.
A final word
All in all, the success of the course was summarised by Annette, in this unsolicited response which she wrote "on behalf of her classmates":
"Thank you for a wonderful module in which the world opened for me in the most dramatic way of which I could only dream. Since December 1995 I experienced something which cannot be described in words... In January I had no idea what you were talking about when you said ‘it’s easy, you just take an existing web page and overwrite your own text...’ Today I even downloaded a program and I can do it. I talk to the world overnight and people look at me with longing eyes when I speak of the Internet, WWW and email... If this were the only module I had done of the M.Ed. (CAE) it would have been worth it. I am no longer that monkey swinging from a branch about to fall off. Your course was a breathtaking experience... What about a follow up".
This glowing testimonial to the course is encouraging in terms of quality assurance, when the quality of the course is evaluated.
Although the Internet is still slow and primitive, it is the Information Superhighway in its infancy and we need, right now, to start developing our skills of exploiting the medium to our best advantage.
Note
The contributions of the students to the Masters' Degree in computer-based education, and particularly that of Patsy Clarke who studied the messages for her dissertation, is gratefully recognised.
References
Clark, R.E. 1994. Media Will Never Influence Learning Educational Technology Research and Development, (42)2, 21-30
Ference, P.R. & Vockell, E.L. (1994). Adult Learning Characteristics and effective software instruction Educational Technology, 34(6) 25-31
Galusha, J.M. 1998. Barriers to Learning in Distance Education. http://www.infrastruction.com/articles.htm
Gates, W.H. 1995. The Road Ahead London: Viking.
Hannafin, M.J. and Peck, K.L. 1988. The Design, Development, and Evaluation of Instructional Software. New York: Macmillan.
Kozma, R.B. 1987. The implications of cognitive psychology for computer-based learning tools. Educational Technology. 27 (11): 20 - 25.
Merrill, D. 1991. Constructivism and instructional design. Educational Technology. 31 (5): 45 - 52.
RBO880 Curriculum. 1997 Course Notes for M.Ed. Computer-Assisted Education, University of Pretoria. Available http://hagar.up.ac.za/rbo/curri.html
Reigeluth, C.M. (1996). A new paradigm of ISD? Educational Technology, 36(3), 13-20.
Reiser, R.A. 1994. Clark’s Invitation to the Dance: An Instructional Designer’s Response. Educational Technology Research and Development, (42)2, 45-48.
South Africa (1996) Green paper on higher education transformation. Department of Education. http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/green_papers/hegreenp.html
Related Reading
Hwang, J. 1997. Lifetime learning. Free China Review 47(1) 18-19.
Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R.T. 1991. Learning Together and Alone. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Norton, P. 1995. Integrating technology: using telecommunications to augment graduate teacher education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education 3(1) 3-12.
Spikes, W.F. 1990. Training in the twenty-first century: Where do we go from here? Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Adult and Continuing Education, Salt Lake City.
Thatch, E.C. 1995. Competencies for distance education professionals. Educational Technology Research And Development, 43(1), 57 - 79.
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