A popular series of television
commercials shows children with mellifluous and exotic voices presenting facts
about the Internet and its explosive growth and asking, �Are you ready?���� This seems a fitting question for everyone
considering the future of the University, as the Internet provides a vehicle
for the unprecedented availability of information.� The global proliferation of the Internet and the increasing
speeds of transmission mean that information is available at a click of a
mouse, anywhere in the world, at the time and place of one�s choice, and in a
manner that encourages individual exploration.�
Are we, in the academy, ready for
the opportunities that the technological revolution offers?� The global availability of the knowledge of
humankind will be accompanied by extraordinary changes in how professors
approach their tasks of presenting and evaluating information.�� Books, papers and annual conventions have
already been augmented by papers published on the Internet, home pages for
classes, e-mail conversations with students and electronic delivery of
assignments.�� But the changes have just
begun.� The Internet will escort
students into new realms as they analyze and dissect the information being
presented.� Chat rooms, global searches
for information, referencing sources on the Internet, and a broader approach to
education will be the norm as students amass and evaluate information and weave
it into their personal context.� But
these are only the obvious, and perhaps the most immediate, consequences.� In this chapter, we can take a further look
at some of the issues that the technological revolution will have for the City
of the Intellect, examining first the context for the use of technology, then
turning to the implications for student learning, and finally, registering some
of the concerns that have been voiced as learning migrates away from the center
of a campus.�
The Context for the Use of
Technology
Why should faculty be persuaded to
forsake the chalkboard of the past to embrace the Internet as an aid in
delivering information?� The reasons
extend beyond the campus and come from a constellation of societal forces that
ushered in the 21st century.�
The Need for Higher Education.�
Peter Drucker�s (1995) prophetic
observations about the knowledge society began with the assumption that
education would be the center-piece of the society in the new millennium.� He argues that knowledge has become the
chief resource in our economy and 40% of the work force currently depend on
knowledge for their livelihood (Drucker, 2000).� In contrast, through much of the 20th century, the
majority of workers were manual workers who learned a set of skills and
practiced them throughout their careers.�
While Drucker�s focus on education
and the importance of knowledge certainly warms the hearts of academicians, his
comments about the process and the delivery of information are perhaps less
well received as they move the academy in its present campus-based and isolated
form from center stage to back stage.�
He argues compellingly that more and more of our general knowledge and
especially the advanced knowledge that will be required must be acquired well
past the age of global schooling and in an educational setting that does not
center on the traditional academic venue.�
In fact, an educated person will be someone who has learned how to
negotiate vast amounts of information and is able to replenish and update their
knowledge throughout their lifetime.
Hidden in this discussion of the
need for life-long learning is the clear supposition that students who are not
receiving an education past high school are severely handicapped in the
knowledge-based society.�� At least two
years of education beyond high school are a requirement for functioning in the
technologically-based society that will be more and more prevalent as the
twenty-first century emerges.�� But if
100% of our eighteen year olds moved into a college or college-like setting,
the traditional academy would split at the seams.� The conservative estimate is that meeting the needs of these
students in a formal budgeted education would require the addition of the
equivalent of 250,000 students per year or adding immediately thirteen equivalents
of Harvard University.�
On a global level, the crisis is
even more severe.� One new campus would
need to open every week, somewhere in the world, just to keep participation
rates constant (Daniel, 1997).� If we
accept the need to provide a larger percentage of the population with a college
education, then we must find new ways to deliver this education.
The Increase in Population.
Population growth around the world is outpacing our capacity to provide
a university education for our youth. The surge in demand for higher education
worldwide and a job market that continually raises its expectations exacerbate
the problem.
In the United States, the children
of the baby boomers will hit college campuses over the next decade, leading to
an increase of some two million traditional college age students (Dolence and
Norris, 1995). California alone is
expecting 63,000 additional students to seek places at the University of
California. At the state college
system, an addition 250,000 students should enroll over the same period and the
community college system is looking at over 400,000 additional students.
If we are to prepare our young
people to function in the knowledge society, we must increase both the
percentage of students who receive a higher education and accommodate the
expanding population.
The
Increasing Cost of Education. Financing higher
education is another aspect of the discussion.
The popular literature each fall announces the increase in tuition rates
at selective schools across the country, prompting congressional hearings and
investigative reports. If success in
the society is based on knowledge and a prerequisite for success is an
education that goes well beyond high school, then access to that knowledge must
be affordable. A thoughtful discussion
of the increasing fees and the affordability of higher education in the United
States is included in this volume (Mortonsen, 2000). Sending a child to a public university now consumes 15% of a family’s
income compared to 9% just fifteen years ago
(Daniel, 1997). As tuition and
fees have increased, students, especially those from lower income families, are
unable to attend a residential college.
A recent
article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Woodward, 2000) examined this
issue in a global context. In most
countries, public financing of higher education has not kept pace with student
need because of declining budgets, increasing populations and competing
national goals. Funding higher
education may not be a top priority of governments, especially when juxtaposed
with the very real world crises in health and the problems of providing
sufficient food and potable water in many countries. Only by imposing or increasing tuition, and then tempering these
costs with financial aid, can governments hope to finance higher
education. Higher tuition and fees
worldwide are, therefore, inevitable unless the model for delivering higher
education changes.
The Knowledge Explosion. “On an average weekday, the New York Times contains more information
than any contemporary of Shakespeare’s would have acquired in a lifetime.” This anonymous but ubiquitous quote provides
some context for the knowledge explosion we are facing. The volume of new information is increasing
at such a rapid pace that the class of 2000 is being exposed to more new data
in a year than their grandparents encountered in a lifetime. Knowledge now doubles every seven years,
primed by the ten thousand scientific articles that are published every day
(Forman, 1995).
Coping with this avalanche of
knowledge has spurred universities to new levels of specialization. The academy has added disciplines,
departments and courses, increased faculty specialization, and expanded
faculties, libraries and facilities. A
valiant effort has been made to absorb all of this new information and bundle
it appropriately for student consumption, but the incredible pace of knowledge
production requires a fundamentally different approach to acquiring and housing
information.
The combination of these factors -
the increased need for higher education in the information society, the echo of
the baby boom rolling through higher education institutions between now and
2010, the escalating cost of higher education, and a logarithmic explosion in
knowledge – require that information be provided in fundamentally different
ways.
Innovative
Uses of Technology in the Classroom
Framing the
problem, as I have done above, is perhaps the easiest part of the
assignment. If we fail to educate our
young people, the consequences to society are momentous. However, identifying the specific paths we
should follow to deal with this tangle of issues is more hazardous. Sir John Daniel (1997), in a paper titled,
“Technology is the answer: What was the
question?” provides a clear and
unabashed solution. From his vantage
point, technology offers the means to educate our populations and renew the
university without pricing that education out of the reach of students or
governments.
Looking at
universities within the United States, one can find many examples of
educational goals that have been achieved with the help of technology. In selecting several of these to profile
here, I have begun with an educational goal, looked at how the technology
helped achieve that goal and framed the use of technology within other academic
priorities.
Preserving
Low Enrollment Courses. Classes that traditionally
attract few students will be under increased pressure as legions of new
students demand access. But it is
precisely these classes that maintain our identity, values, and principles as
keepers of the universe of knowledge and separate us from job shops that teach
a single skill. Technology offers the
opportunity to maintain enrollments in courses like the less frequently taught
languages, classics, and in other specialized courses by concatenating student
interest regionally or globally.
Every dean
has wrestled with whether or not to fund courses that year after year attract
only a handful of students. At higher
education institutions around the country, classics courses have been
disappearing at an alarming rate, primarily because of low enrollments. Although classics as a course of study
occupies a special place in the history of the academy, these courses do not
attract a large number of students.
Should deans continue to fund these courses while other departments are
turning students away from oversubscribed courses?
One of the
early examples of adapting technology to serve the needs of the academy came
from the University of Pennsylvania where a classics graduate course on
Boethius was adapted to serve students who were interested regardless of their
location. Rather than a handful of students, the professor was able to have
a class of several hundred from places as distant as Hong Kong, Europe, Canada,
and around the United States.
Some
faculty worry that efficiencies helping to maintain low enrollment courses
could lead to a single version of introductory courses taught by a master,
whose expertise would displace faculty in other institutions. Michael Saylor, the CEO of Microstrategy, is
proposing just such a use of technology, arguing that he will replace 10,000
average professors with an all-star faculty.
Such a scenario ignores both the differences in students and the many
approaches that faculty use in to create interest in a subject. Faculty reacted sharply and quickly to
Saylor’s suggestion, decrying this approach as counterfeit education. Knee-jerk reactions aside, the data suggest
that courses need to be adapted to learners and that such adaptations are often
quite subtle. Faculty from California
State University working with materials from the Open University found that
even these high quality materials were improved if they were revised to reflect
the differing backgrounds and cultures of students in California.
Educational
programs that offer a limited array of programs for profit have been criticized
for peeling off the most lucrative degree programs, such as the MBA, and
ignoring the larger universe of knowledge.
Traditional universities pride themselves on offering a variety of
courses and majors and producing a well-rounded graduate. Using technology to advantage should allow
these traditional institutions to maintain these less efficient courses and
continue their tradition of offering programs that span the basic foundations
of knowledge.
Life-Long
Learning. College and Universities have always
taken their mission to serve seriously.
Whether as land grant institutions offering advice on agricultural
practices or public universities that need to provide a technically
sophisticated workforce, universities have traditionally created and conveyed
knowledge to a wider circle than their residential students. The need, discussed earlier, for education
that continues through multiple careers and refurbishes knowledge can be
accomplished readily with a technological assist.
The
Michigan Virtual Automotive College was formed in 1996 by the State of
Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan, the state's
other colleges and universities, and the auto industry. Today, it is the Michigan Virtual Automotive
and Manufacturing College, a division of the Michigan Virtual University. It is working to integrate the automotive
education and training offerings of Michigan's higher education providers with
the support services needed to provide convenient, cost-effective and
high-quality manufacturing education and training. Using a variety of technologies to deliver courses, this college
addresses the need to provide ongoing education in the rapidly changing
automotive industry.
Stanford
University’s School of Engineering has been collaborating with industry for
thirty years to provide the technical expertise that fuels silicon valley’s
explosive growth. Currently over 250
industries are part of the collaborative effort by which employees in these
companies may earn advanced degrees from Stanford University. The classes are of course offered
virtually. Thirty years ago they were
offered via video tape. The academic goals are the same, the technology has
changed and the scope of the enterprise has been enlarged by the improvements
in technology.
Examples like this must be
multiplied to enable students to return to class without returning to
campus. Whether degrees, certificates,
or a new set of skills are the goal, universities can use technology to help
meet the demands of involved professionals.
Ongoing career education cannot disrupt career paths in this fast-paced
world. Individuals will not be able to
take 2 years or even a semester from their careers to return to the campus of
their choice. The information they
need must be packaged in ways that are accessible, flexible, and convenient,
not on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from ten to eleven. Knowledge that is available on demand and is
presented in a format that engages the student will become the norm (Davis and
Botkin, 1995).
Global
Education. Accessing education is a global
problem, and because the United States is viewed as offering high quality
undergraduate and graduate programs, our campuses have begun to extend courses,
not just regionally, but globally.
Duke
University’s global executive MBA program uses a combination of on-campus
activities, on-line activities, and off-site activities. Students begin the 19-month program by
attending two weeks of class at Duke University in North Carolina. Subsequent residential sessions, each two
weeks long are spaced throughout the course of study. Between these five residential sessions, the faculty use
interactive, distance-education technology to complement and extend the
classroom experience. Additional
residential sections might be offered in Salzburg, Buenos Aires, or Hong Kong,
but are designed to cover North America, Europe, Asia and South America and to
include emerging and developing countries as case studies. Student evaluations often focus on the
life-changing nature of studying in several countries with classmates from
around the globe.
As the Duke
program unfolded, a somewhat unexpected result occurred. Students, who initially viewed the
technology as a means to access their coursework and chat rooms began to see
the possibilities for the use of technology in their businesses. As they gained experience in using
technology to bridge distances,
creating teams of students working together on a problem, and accessing
global information quickly, they began to see how technology could and should
be used to manage global organizations.
The unique
structure of this program allows students to work and live anywhere in the
world as they pursue their MBA, as long as they can secure access to the
Internet. Participants represent a wide
array of industries, hold varying job responsibilities and professional
backgrounds, and represent diverse cultures and nationalities. The flexibility, the chance to grapple with
international problems in an international setting, and a diverse set of
colleagues have brought rave reviews from the students and a long waiting list
for the program.
Multiple
universities have realized that information presented on the web might well
need to be in languages other than English.
Virginia Tech was among the first to provide students with a choice of
language when they logged onto the site.
If students selected a language other than English, the remainder of
their search through the catalog would be presented in the alternate
language. Such accommodations make the
possibility of global studies and global students a reality as they bridge one
of the first barriers to interaction--language.
The Open
University in Britain is the best example of a University that has increased
global access to higher education. In
1997, 25,000 students and 150,000 non-UK students enrolled. Currently 50,000 students in England and
200,000 non-UK students attend. By 2020
administrators expect to be educating 150,000 students in England and 300,000
who are not located in England. Affordability
and accessibility are cornerstone concepts.
The modular credit and the high standards for course materials guarantee
that coursework will transfer readily to other universities if necessary.
Although
the Open University is often mentioned as an example of the superior use of
technology, in fact their courses rely on high quality materials in many
media. Books, pamphlets, videos, and
more recently Internet materials are all available.
Futurists
predict that the global need for higher education will stimulate software
companies to bridge the cultural difficulties.
High-flying technology companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, and Novell
are building extensive infrastructure to deliver professional education over
the Internet (Baer, 1998). These
companies hope to tap the corporate education and training business in the United
States, which represents an annual market of more than $50 billion dollar
(Department of Commerce, 1995). In
addition to the huge professional market, sophisticated, flexible, and
user-friendly courseware will be available for undergraduate courses. By 2010, many predict that high-quality
versions of the 25 most common college courses will be widely used. Students will then submit their coursework
for certification to a degree-granting institution of their choice (Dunn,
2000).
These
different examples indicate the gradual dawning of the global education
market. Countries must respond to the
needs of their citizens to learn and participate in the technological surge of
the 21st century.
Technologically mediated courses offer an economically feasible way for
students to acquire needed skills.
Given the shrinking globe and the interrelationship of world markets,
programs like Duke’s executive MBA will become a necessary part of an
executive’s training.
Meeting increased demand in math and
science. One might expect the wave of new students to
be spread evenly over the curriculum, requiring all departments to accommodate
an equal portion of the increase. In
fact, math and science departments must absorb a disproportionate share of the
incoming students for basic instruction and then watch as they migrate to
engineering, the natural sciences or social sciences. The need for more graduates in all areas of technology and the
cry that all graduates be more sophisticated in mathematical and scientific
arenas adds to the bottleneck in beginning math and science courses.
Universities have struggled with how
to offer sufficient math for all of these students and simultaneously provide
instruction that spans the many different levels of mathematical instruction
required in a modern day university. Many students require remedial instruction
in order to pass basic math competency tests.
In addition, the information society has made an understanding of basic
mathematics and statistics a prerequisite to entering and understanding the
majority of fields. No wonder math
departments are reeling under the onslaught.
One of the
most innovative ways of meeting the heightened demand for math instruction is
Virginia Tech’s mathematics emporium. Located in a renovated warehouse, the
math emporium consists of 500 workstations arranged in pods of six
computers. On these computers students
may take any one of fourteen courses. The math emporium is open 24 hours a day
7 days a week. It is staffed by math
department faculty for 80 hours of the week.
By converting professors’ teaching assignments from number of courses
taught per year to number of hours in which one would staff the math emporium,
the math department has been able to offer mathematical instruction to 6,791
students at a significant savings to the department.
The
programmed math courses available at each workstation are set to address the
individual needs of the students.
Students may work individually, in pairs or groups. They receive immediate feedback both from
the carefully programmed computer instruction and from staff who are on the
floor of the math emporium. The
advantage, of course, is that students can pace themselves in their learning. Initial evaluations suggest that students
learn as well or better than in traditional courses. During the first years of operation, approximately 10 percent
fewer students received failing grades in courses taught at the math
emporium. Given the resources being
poured into math classes, reducing the number of students who fail saves money,
but it also moves students into more advanced classes, their majors, and
through their degree faster, not to mention eliminating the demoralization that
goes along with poor performance.
An equally innovative
science teaching project arose at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute when their
very able first-year students expressed mounting dissatisfaction with
increasingly large lecture classes.
Math and science courses were restructured into “studio courses” for
48-64 students that combined the lectures, the laboratories and discussion
sections in one setting and integrated the three with multimedia and web-based
technology. Students presented with
this rich interactive environment began to take control of their learning. Although they could, at any time, listen to
a professor’s explanation, this quickly became the court of last resort. In the studio courses, lectures were
de-emphasized and textbooks were augmented by a variety of interactive multimedia
materials. Lectures were replaced by
cooperative learning experiences, mini-lectures, teacher mentoring, and much
more hands-on experience. As with the
math emporium, the students began to play a greater role in directing their own
learning. The studio courses
integrating lectures, discussions and labs required professors to think courses
through very carefully and provide integrated materials that focused on key
learning objectives such as higher-order thinking and problem solving (Pipes
and Wilson, 1996).
The studio
model surpassed expectations on all measures.
Student performance and satisfaction rose quickly, and attendance soared
to over 90%. Students were in class
two hours less per week but learned more in the flexible, well-integrated
studio courses. When asked to evaluate
the courses, ninety percent of the students indicated that the studio format
would be a positive reason for attending Rensselaer.
Financially,
the studio courses provided more intimate instruction at a lower cost. The total cost of the integrated studio
courses was lower than the traditional model that separated instruction into
lectures, labs, and discussions and provided instructors for each. Since many of the traditional discussion
sections had been taught by faculty, the studio model actually reduced the
faculty teaching load.
While not
necessarily increasing access, the studio model grabs student interest,
enhances their learning, and moves freshman toward higher levels of
understanding of science and technology.
The Rensselaer experience also demonstrates that seat time is not a good
measure of learning and carefully prepared materials that engage students can
produce high-level cognitive skills.
More and
more students need to master math and science in order to function in our
increasingly technologically oriented society.
The innovative approaches to instruction in these traditionally
difficult subject areas provide insight into how technologically mediated
courses can facilitate student learning while keeping costs in line.
Looking to the Future
The
examples highlighted above are harbingers of technological innovations that
will sweep over college campuses in the next decade. The uses of such technology will be spurred primarily by the
increase in students and the need to provide a higher education for a larger
percentage of students. Costs cannot
keep escalating and some of the examples provided have maintained or reduced
costs while improving student learning.
Contemplating
this revolution prompts questions about the changing campus environment. How are professors’ role changed? What do students miss in a technologically
mediated course? Are there ways to
provide such experiences within the new environment? While the questions here outnumber the answers, some beginning
discussion of the issues will perhaps point us in the right direction.
The Role
of the Professor. The changing role of the professor in a
technologically mediated course has been reduced to aphorisms such as “the sage
on the stage will become the guide on the side.” While this thought conveys some of the obvious presentation
differences, it does not capture the range of changes in preparation,
presentation, and interaction that take place.
Until recently, faculty single-handedly designed, developed, and
delivered courses, all the while mediating and evaluating student
learning. As classes grew, teaching
assistants helped with the student services, but the design, development and
delivery were still largely the province of the faculty member.
The Open University has pioneered
the dissection of these functions, using faculty to ensure that the design of
the course meets the highest standards, but then allowing the development of
materials to proceed under faculty guidance and the delivery of those materials
to be undertaken by tutors. Reserving
faculty and using their expertise for the design and oversight of the
development of courses has allowed the Open University to serve students in
unprecedented numbers. As this model is
reproduced around the world, mega-universities that serve more than a million
students have arisen in China and Turkey, and a dozen countries have a single
university that serves over 100,000 students (Daniel, 1997).
One of the most helpful alliances
for faculty wanting to begin using technology in their courses is an
instructional designer. At Penn State,
faculty are paired with an instructional designer who becomes familiar with the
course, the professor’s desires and manner of instruction and then organizes a
team to help deliver a course that satisfies the goals. Initially, each course to be transformed was
approached de novo. As
experience in transforming courses accumulated, some standardization was
achieved to bring down costs and increase efficiency. Still, customization from a basic template is the norm and
faculty tinker with courses even while they are being created (Carnevale,
2000).
At Virginia Tech, faculty roles in
the mathematics department were
transformed when they designed the math emporium to handle the crush of
students needing courses in everything from algebra to partial differential
equations. To staff the emporium, a
faculty member’s teaching load was transformed from courses-per-semester to
hours-per-week monitoring the math emporium. From 1988 to 1998, a faculty
member’s teaching time was carved into dramatically different slices.
Teaching Activities 1988 1998
Student Contact 40% 20%
Lecturing 25% 12%
Office
hours 20% 5%
Lab
hours 0% 10%
e-mail 0% 20%
Indirect Student Contact 5% 25%
Generating Materials 35% 50%
Administration 20% 5%
Not surprisingly, lectures and
office hours decreased, because the emporium serves as a substitute for both,
but time spent responding to e-mail increased.
The total amount of student contact has not changed, it has just
switched to a heavier reliance on contacts outside the lecture hall and the
office. On the administrative side,
testing and grading all but disappear as these functions are woven into the
on-line courses and become incorporated into the task of generating materials.
The math emporium provides one
example of how faculty roles change when the professor moves to a different,
technologically mediated model of delivery of information. But this example does not examine the many
subtle changes in the interaction between the professor and the students. The formality associated with transmitting
information using technology blurs many of the subtler cues that heighten the
value of interaction. “The complex and
delicate group dynamics of a live class and the rich ‘orchestrations’ that such
a learning group provides aren’t reproducible in screen-mediated situations”
(Farber, 1998, p. 807-808).
To date, we have hardly begun to
consider, quantify, or evaluate the intangibles involved in classroom
instruction. The jokes told before
class, the disclosing of personal information that makes the professor real to
the students, the quirky way the professor arranges notes on the lectern all
add to the students’ interaction with the material. The asides that mention professors’ involvement in research,
their interaction with colleagues around the globe, the discipline as a
profession, or providing knowledge to the community are coded by students as
part of their understanding of the area.
Long after students have forgotten the details of a class, they have
striking memories of the professor that influenced they way they approach a
subject. These intangible parts of a
class often serve a silent mentoring role for students who are thinking about
majors, graduate school or careers.
How does one maintain these moments in a more formal technological
medium? The use of e-mail, chat rooms,
and other vehicles for less formal interaction may well provide alternatives
that have their own richness.
For example, the arrangement of
workstations in the math emporium to form a pod which fans outward, provides
the opportunity for multiple students to consider a problem, play and replay an
explanation, track a solution, kibbutz as others work, and discuss alternative
solutions. The physical setting in the
studio courses at Rensselaer were also designed to facilitate student
interaction. E-mail interactions may
allow shy students, students who are hesitant because of their accent, or are
slow to formulate their ideas to participate at much higher levels than in the
typical lecture class.
Mathematics may be somewhat
atypical, at least at the lower division level, because the coursework focuses
on how to accomplish certain mathematical functions. Well-codified knowledge can be captured readily in software. But in less structured fields, professors
must help with the synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of the torrent of
information that pours daily into every discipline. In 1982, John Naisbitt portrayed us as “wallowing in detail” and
“drowning in information.” His
characterization predated electronic databases filled with the equivalent of
libraries of information and the world wide web with its billions of pages of
information available at a click of a mouse.
The information is available, in dizzying quantities, but the sheer
quantity only highlights the critical role of college professors--to help
students organize this information once it has been amassed—to assimilate it,
find meaning in it, and assure its survival for use by generations to come
(Gregorian, 1993).
The changes in the role of the
college professor will undoubtedly vary by discipline, by course, by
educational goals and delivery mode. In
particular areas, where knowledge is well-structured and builds sequentially,
professors will spend the majority of their time designing courses that
shepherd students through the foundational concepts. In other areas, promoting critical analysis of a wealth of
material will be a central goal.
Regardless of discipline, however, professors will likely spend their
time where it is needed and move away from a fixed schedule of lectures. If faculty agree on the major goals of
education, such as the need to expand students’ horizons, expose students to
the basic concepts in a field, foster an appreciation for research, and enhance
analytical skills, they can then consider how best to allocate their time in
meeting these goals.
The Role of Students. Student roles probably change more dramatically than faculty
roles in courses that are mediated through technology. In the new course configurations students
assume increased responsibility, no longer waiting passively for the instructor
to entertain, to indicate what is on the exam, or to interpret the
readings. The professor will provide
the structure for the course and design the materials, but students must
negotiate their own way through the lessons.
A careful evaluation of the Math
Emporium indicated that students accustomed to a more passive lecture mode were
initially uncomfortable with the requirement that they be responsible for their
learning. They felt abandoned, wondered
why no one was teaching them and seemed to drift in the coursework. By the end of the course, however, most students
had learned to direct their learning in much more efficient ways and could use
the professor as a resource. The
youngest students seemed to have the most difficulty negotiating this
transition and expressed frustration with the course format.
Rensselaer’s studio courses proved
to be enormously popular with the students.
Students enjoyed the course, attended the sessions, and learned
more. Students in the math and physics
courses performed as well as or better than students in the traditional courses,
in spite of the roughly one-third reduction in class contact time. In both mathematics and physics, more topics
were covered in the Studio courses than in the lecture courses. Although not all students preferred
Rensselaer’s studio classes, the high level of student satisfaction suggests
that these students made the transition to active learning quickly and that
frustration and drifting were minimal.
Once students are comfortable with
their role as active learners, the flexibility of technologically mediated
coursework increases a student’s opportunities. Students will be able to leave campuses to study abroad or pursue
an internship, maintaining their contact with their campus via technology. Completing coursework necessary for their
major or graduation is no longer a barrier to participating in these
life-changing experiences.
Timely progress toward a degree suffers when classes are
oversubscribed and not available.
Technologically mediated courses can help overcome these barriers. In fact, more and more campuses are
reporting that on-line courses designed for students off-site end up attracting
many residential students. The
University of Colorado at Denver put courses on-line to boost its adult education
classes and found that 80% of the students who enrolled were actually
matriculated day students (Burdman, 1998).
Stanford and the University of Washington also report that students on
campus are attracted to the on-line courses.
Class conflicts, work schedules, transportation issues, practice
schedules for their sports, and personal preferences led students to sign up
for an on-line course even though the more conventional presentation was
available. These on-campus students
were not about to forsake campus life, but enrolled in an on-line course
because it allowed them to juggle course schedules with other activities.
Some of these students, who came to
an on-line course reluctantly, soon found that the material was individualized
in a way no classroom instruction can be.
Students could replay the explanation, turn to an alternative
explanation, try another problem, or skip ahead if they had mastered the
concept and test themselves on the material.
In well-constructed courses, all students can receive a curriculum
tailored to their needs, learning style, pace and profile of mastery (Gardner,
2000).
One of the
prized aspects of the academy is providing students the time to reflect on the
information being presented and to encourage students to probe and extend ideas
presented in the classroom or the text (Mauro, 1999). This shading of knowledge and the development of nuance as each
student weaves their personal perspective into the class lessons takes
different forms when the information is mediated with technology. The interactions and questions that dominate
the classroom setting give way to chat rooms and e-mails as vehicles for
personalizing the information.
John Seely
Brown and Paul Duguid (2000) offer a cautionary note about these substitutions
for social experiences. They argue that
technology doesn’t work unless supported by viable communities and
institutions. Successful examples of
technologically mediated instruction, such as Rensselaer’s studio courses,
provide this faculty and institutional support. Without it, drop-outs soar and students express frustration and
dissatisfaction (Henri and Anthony, 1993).
Creating
highly interactive learning environments between and among students is actually
easier in an on-line course than in a large lecture. In addition to the chat rooms and e-mail, Levin and Waddoups
(2000) recommend a variety of strategies including (a) on-line conferencing,
(b) conference call opportunities just for students to communicate among
themselves, (c) group assignments that
become more challenging as the course progresses, and (d) heavy instructor
involvement in group activities, especially in the earlier assignments. As in many on-line courses, the deep concern
for interaction is obvious, but that interaction uses the technology to
advantage.
Of course, student motivation
overcomes a variety of sins. Older
students, students who otherwise would not have access to such coursework,
students needing a particular set of knowledge to progress in their career, and
students wanting to change careers are all eager learners who adapt easily to
technologically mediated courses.
Still, even these students need to have checkpoints, time-lines, course
structures, and monitors who express an interest in their learning. Support services maintain interest in the class and keep students moving through
the coursework. Part of the Open
University’s success comes from face-to-face tutorials built into the
schedule.
Shifting
the responsibility of learning to the student does not mean ignoring faculty
accountability. As the discussion about
technologically mediated learning continues, faculty must ask whether students
learn as well, better, or less well than when information is presented in a
more traditional format. Careful evaluations
of technologically-mediated courses to date have highlighted the need for
student support services, the drop-out rate if such services are not offered,
the initial frustration that students experience if they have been used to
sitting passively while the professor lectures, and the insignificance of
seat-time as an index of student learning.
The early data also quantify the usefulness of a variety of
technologically-mediated forms of interaction such as chat rooms, more focused
group assignments and assignments that are mediated via e-mail. Several successful courses have built in a
process of faculty involvement in group assignments that gradually weans
students from depending on the professor.
For
decades, cognitive psychologists have been lobbying for active participation by
students in the learning process. The
large lectures that grew up in the last 30 years moved the student away from
this ideal and fostered an observer role.
And the discussion classes, designed to bring the student back into the
conversation, often became review sessions.
Technologically mediated instruction fosters the involvement of the
student and flounders when students are passive. The experience of the last several years, as curricula have been
revised to require active participation of students, demonstrates that the
cognitive psychologists were right.
When done well, learning in a technologically mediated course proceeds
at a faster pace, and is characterized by higher levels of student involvement,
better retention of the material, and greater student satisfaction.
Economics. Embracing technology as a means to increase access and
respond to the burgeoning demand of students around the globe depends on
achieving these goals without breaking the bank. Faculty who pioneered technologically mediated instruction
reported spending long hours preparing materials, overcoming technical
difficulties, and responding to e-mails.
While the early adopters put in these hours as a labor of love,
extending the technology to the broader faculty would clearly require
additional resources to overcome these problems. Hence, early returns suggested that technologically mediated
courses saved neither time nor money and didn’t scale because of the time
required to respond to students in some alternative interactive forum.
The
wholesale curricular revisions undertaken by the Open University, Rensselaer
and Virginia Tech are, however, clearly cost effective. To achieve these economies, the curriculum
and how it was delivered were entirely rethought. Student learning and student satisfaction were two hallmarks by
which success was measured and quality was considered throughout the
planning. In all cases, the faculty
roles were substantially different in the new configuration. The Open University separated the myriad activities
that faculty had traditionally undertaken as part of their teaching
responsibilities and enlisted paraprofessionals in the delivery of
information. The math emporium moved
from podium hours to hours spent in the emporium. Rensselaer reduced contact time and maximized the efficiency
through their studio courses. In all
cases, faculty maintained oversight of the curriculum, took responsibility for
quality, and managed the development of the materials. In economic terms, the successful programs
that reduced cost changed the labor/capital mix in some manner (Massy,
1995).
In symposia
around the country debating the future of technology in education, two
constants emerge. Weaving
technologically assisted courses into a curriculum must come from the faculty
because such a change depends on an even more fundamental process, rethinking
of traditional practices. A move away
from contact hours and fixed-term courses will be required. Unless this redesign of the curriculum takes
place, the technological overlay becomes an additional expense, not a cost
savings. A symposium at Stanford
underlined this message.
Technology’s role in
transforming undergraduate education should become a centerpiece of
institutional visions and strategic plans.
Specific milestones need to be set, responsibilities assigned, budgets
allocated, and systems of accountability established. Needed changes cannot be achieved by uncoordinated individual
efforts, although individual initiatives will certainly be essential. The academic department might well be the
main agent of change since the actions needed lie beyond the reach of
individual professors, (Massy, 1995, p. 14)
To answer
yes to the question, “Are you ready?”, the academy must be willing to embrace
technology as a means of (a) increasing access and affordability, (b) extending
the educational attainments of young people, and (c) maintaining the career
viability of professionals. Continuing
business as usual will mean that either others will take over the task of
educating our students or our citizenry will not have access to the education
it needs. Neither alternative should be
acceptable to the City of Intellect.
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