Emerging Issues in Distance Education Research and Practice

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Emerging Issues in Distance Education Research
and Practice
Presentation at http//crdol.athabascau.ca/brazil
keynote.htm
Associação Brasileira deEducação a Distância
Sao Paula, Sept 2, 2002

• Terry Anderson Ph.D.
• Canada Research Chair
• - Distance Education
• Athabasca University
• Terrya_at_athabascau.ca

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Overview

• Interaction as compelling research question
• Example of our work with educational objects
• Implications for where this fits with the
  emerging educational semantic web

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Context Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada
Largest Open University in Canada Fastest growing
University in Canada 50,000 enrolments Graduate
and undergraduate programs Largest Masters of
Distance Education program Largest MBA and MDE
programs in Canada
Athabasca University
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Wayne Gretzky
"Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where
the puck is going to be. 61 NHL records
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Education is about Interaction
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Fundamental problem of Distance Education-
Getting the Mix Right

• Daniel and Marquis (1979) getting the mixture
  right between independent study and interactive
  learning strategies

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Educational Media
Face-to-face
Computer conferencing
Video conferencing
Interaction
Audio conferencing
Radio
Television
Correspondence/CAL
Independence of Time and Distance
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Educational Media
Face-to-face
Computer conferencing
Net Based Learning
Video conferencing
Interaction
Audio conferencing
Radio
Television
Correspondence
Independence of Time and Distance
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Defining Interaction

• Wagners (1994) definition as reciprocal events
  that require at least two objects and two
  actions. Interactions occur when these objects
  and events mutually influence one another(p. 8).

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The Compelling case for Interaction Research

• Interaction associated with
• Student satisfaction (Shea et al. 2001)
• Faculty satisfaction (Hartman, J. L. and
  Truman-Davis, B, 2000)
• Outcomes (Piccano, 2002)
• Awareness (Langer, 1997)
• Persistence (Coldeway, 1992)
• Cost of delivery (Bates, 1998)

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Functions of Interaction

• allowing for learner control,
• facilitating program adaptation based on learner
  input,
• Participation and communication building
  community
• aid to meaningful and personalized learning
• Pacing
• the value of another persons perspective, is a
  key learning component in constructivist learning
  theories

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Therefore is more interaction always Better??

• No !!
• Some students choose DE as a way to avoid
  interaction
• Interaction generally costs more than
  non-interactive education and is much less
  scaleable
• there is a very wide range of student need and
  preference for different combinations of paced
  and un-paced synchronous and asynchronous
  activity
• strong desire for variety and exposure to
  different modes and modularitys of educational
  provision and activity

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Educational Interactions
Learner / learner
Learner
Learner / teacher
Learner / content
Teacher
Content
Teacher / content.
Teacher / teacher
Content / content

• Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

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Are Interactions Equivalent?Anderson Equivalency
Theorum

• Sufficient levels of deep and meaningful learning
  can be developed as long as one of the three
  forms of interaction is at a very high level. The
  other two may be offered at minimal levels or
  even eliminated without degrading the educational
  experience.
• High levels of more then one of these three modes
  may offer a more satisfying educational
  experience, though these experiences will not be
  as cost or time effective as less interactive
  learning sequences.

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What is a high level of Learning?

• Results in looking at something in a new way
• Addresses learners needs
• Motivates learners to spend time
• Challenges learners to understand their own
  learning
• Frames understanding in multiple contexts

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Implications of the Interaction Theorem Student
interaction

• Student- teacher interaction currently has the
  highest perceived value amongst students and thus
  commands highest market value.
• student student interaction is critical for
  learning designs based upon constructivist
  learning theories
• Student- student interaction is critical for
  collaborative or cooperative tasks.
• student-content interaction is most readily
  adapted via individualized student portfolios
  that can influence design, assessment or delivery
  customizations (mass customization).

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Teacher Interaction

• Teacher-student interaction is generally the
  least scaleable type of interaction
• Teacher-teacher collaboration critical to the
  current model of university based research
  production and evaluation
• Teacher agents can perform many of the functions
  that currently consumer teacher time, especially
  those of a bookkeeping, clerical or
  organizational nature,
• Some teacher interaction can be substantiated
  into learning objects (videos, animations,
  assessment programs etc) thus migrating
  student-teacher interaction to student-content
  interaction

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Content Interaction

• Content, the most flexible of actors, willing
  to undertake any combination and quantity of
  interaction.
• The cost and restrictions on value of content
  interaction is falling much faster then
  interaction involving the other two forms of
  interaction (Moores and Metcalfes Laws)
• Within 20 years computer of power and complexity
  of human brain will cost 1000 (Kurzweils Law of
  Increasing Returns)
• The semantic web provides an environment in which
  content can be formalized and manipulated,
  stored, searched and computed automatically
  through autonomous agent technologies.
• The value of the content is dependent on the
  extent to which it engages students or teachers
  in interaction, leading to knowledge construction
  

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From Human Interaction to Agent Assisted
Interaction

• Learner Agents
• Scheduling and assisting individual learning
• Knowledge management

Learner

• Teacher Agents
• 24 hour a day assistants

.
Teacher
Content

• Content Agents
• Managing and updating
• Customizing itself to learner needs

6.
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What is an Agent?

• Autonomous
• Goal orientated
• Self starting
• Operates more or less continuously
• Human like personality
• Communicative abilities
• Adaptable
• Mobile or network enabled
• From Thaiupathump, C., Bourne, J., Campbell, O.
  (1999).

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Student Agents

• Supports many of the traditional students tasks
  of scheduling, searching, editing etc.
• Making collaborative work effective in an
  anytime/anyplace context
• Example I-Help system from University of
  Saskatchewan

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http//www.cs.usask.ca/i-help
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Content Agents

• Update and refresh content
• Manage intellectual property rights
• Repair and protect content
• Negotiate with student client to present
  appropriate level and context of content

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Teacher Agents

• Marking, managing, tutoring, guiding
  coordinating, scheduling
• Inserting new content into course web site,
  notifying and updating as necessary
• Tracking developments in both discipline and
  scholarship of teaching
• Tutor agents secretarial agents research agents

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Hietala, Pentti. (1996) A prototype for a social
learning system with intelligent
agents http//www.uta.fi/ph/papers/EuroAIED96/nod
e3.html
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BUT.Agents cannot work effectively in an
unstructured domain
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The Semantic Web

• semantic of or relating to meaning
• Term coined by Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the
  WWW) in 1998 - see www.w3c.org or Scientific
  America article
• Adds structured meanings and organization to the
  navigational and formatting structure of the
  current web
• Goal to make web space understandable and
  navigable by both humans and agents
• Minimum 10 year project
• Aids locating, accessing, querying, processing
  and exchanging data across a distributed
  heterogeneous network

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Purpose of the semantic web

• We are forming cells within a global brain and
  we are excited that we might start to think
  collectively.
• However, what becomes of us still hangs crucially
  on how we think individually Tim Berners-Lee,
  (1997)

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Semantic Web
E-Commerce
Education and Learning
E-Health and Wellness
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The Educational Experience and the Semantic web

• Step one - Learning Objects

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Learning Objects Definition

• Any digital resource that can be reused to
  support learning. David Wiley (2000)
• Focussed on digitisation, retrieveability, and
  re-use.

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Metadata - Function

• Search engines flounder in the mass of
  undifferentiated documents that range vastly in
  terms of quality, timeliness and relevance. We
  need information about information, metadata,
  to help us organize it Tim Berners-Lee (1997)
• Education objects marked up using metadata such
  as IEEE LOM, IMS or CanCore.

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Moving Beyond Objects to Educational Modelling
Languages
To be re-useable a Shareable Content Object
should be independent of learning context so that
it may be re-used in different learning
experiences SCORM

• How can educational content be decontextualized?
• How can one evaluate an educational object
  outside of this context?
• Need for a structure, compatible with the
  Semantic Web that defines actors, roles,
  objectives, evaluation and other components of
  educational context

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Educational Modeling Languages

• a semantic rich model and binding describing the
  content and processes within units of learning
  from a pedagogical perspective CEN/ISS
• Most popular developed by Rob Koper at the Open
  University of Netherlands
• See http//eml.ou.nl
• Basic unit moves from a learning object to the
  unit of study
• Endorsed by IMS Learning Design Working Group,
  May 2002

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Value of EML

• To formally describe and make accessible (on the
  semantic web) the events and activity of
  education. Such descriptions can then be
  searched, formatted and recombined into new
  educational activities.
• Of immense value in describing and designing
  education practice and relating these activities
  to formal and evolving theory

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EML Unit of Study Model (Koper, 2001)
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EML expressed as XML (Koper, 2001)
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Conclusion

• Interaction comes in many forms and costs, but is
  critical to all forms of education
• E-Learning on a semantic web is the long term
  future of life long learning
• Need active research programs to use the semantic
  web to enhance interaction quality especially
  student-content formats
• Thank you for your time and attention!

Your comments and questions???