Online Education: Experiences and Aspirations

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Online EducationExperiences and Aspirations

• A Presentation byMorten Flate Paulsenhttp//home
  .nettskolen.com/morten/
• Haldin í Verkmenntaskólanum á Akureyri 31. maí
  2002

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Issues

• Online Teaching and Learning
• Learning Management Systems
• Design and Development of Online Courses
• The Globalization of Online Education

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The Presentation is Based on

• The Norwegian (www.nki.no/forlaget)
• and Danish (www.nettskolen.dk)
• versions of my book
• Nettbasert utdanning
• The EU-projects
• Web-edu www.nettskolen.com/in_english
• CISAER www.nettskolen.com/cisaer
• My Doctoral Thesis from Penn State
• Teaching Techniques for computer mediated
  Communication (CMC)

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NKI Nettskolen (www.nettskolen.com)

• Online education since 1987
• 3500 students in 20 countries
• More than 50 female students
• 75 online programs and 300 online courses
• 7000 course enrollments estimated in 2002
• Individual enrollment every day of the year
• Individual pacing and course progression
• No limits with regard to number of students
• Exams at local schools and Norwegian embassies
• Online students get better grades at exams

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SPICE (www.nettskolen.com/spice)

• Specialization Program in International Online
  Education
• SPICE 601 Introduction to International Online
  Education
• SPICE 602 Design and Development of Online
  Courses
• SPICE 603 Online Teaching and Learning
• SPICE 604 Administration Systems and Support
  Services for Online Education
• SPICE 605 International and Comparative Online
  Education
• We would like to have partners in other countries

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My Definition of Online Education

• Online education is characterized by
• the separation of teachers and learners which
  distinguishes it from face-to-face education
• the influence of an educational organization
  which distinguishes it from self-study and
  private tutoring
• the use of a computer network to present or
  distribute some educational content
• the provision of two-way communication via a
  computer network so that students may benefit
  from communication with each other, teachers, and
  staff

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Important Challenges

• From small-scale to large-scale operation
• Cost effectiveness
• Teacher workload
• Individual flexibility versus collaboration in
  groups
• Development of better course content
• Systems integration

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Teaching Techniques for CMC

• My doctoral thesis from Penn State University
  includes
• a literature review with 150 references
• a web questionnaire answered by 150 teachers from
  30 countries
• in-depth e-mail interviews with 38 teachers
• assignment analyses of 23 online courses
• Paulsen, M. F. 1998. Teaching Techniques for
  Computer-mediated Communication

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Teacher Experiences

• The general perception among the surveyed
  teachers is that the teaching techniques have
  high workload, high learning outcome, and high
  recommendability
• The major concern arising from my research is how
  to keep teacher workload at an acceptable level
• The 9-5 teacher could become the 7-11 teacher

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The Online Teachers Nightmare

• Online education offers students excellent
  opportunities to individual communication with
  their tutors. They can be contacted via e-mail 24
  hours a day, 365 days a year. Few learning
  environments provide equal opportunities for
  individual access to teachers. It is obvious that
  online students appreciate to always have a
  personal tutor available. It is the students'
  dream, but it could soon become a nightmare for
  the tutors. 

• I'm really concerned about the heavy workload
  reported by online teachers. Online education
  will never become a real success until we are
  able to limit the teacher workload.
• What will happen when they start teaching large
  scale courses?

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Strategies to Reduce Teacher Workload

• Form a group of experienced and well trained
  teachers.
• Establish a system for technical and
  administrative support.
• Shift attention from spontaneous interactive
  teaching to deliberate course design.
• Pay special attention to the assessment workload
  per student when you design course assignments.
• Restrict teacher interaction with individual
  students.
• Automate responses.
• Develop a scheme to handle the demand for
  expedient responses.

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Examples of Teacher Functions
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Online Teaching Techniques
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Teaching opportunities rarely achieved in other
educational environments

• Convenient use of online resources
• Collaborative learning independent of time and
  space
• Provide time to prepare and reflect on
  contributions
• Facilitate learning activities over extended
  period of time
• Possible to utilize discourse transcripts in
  assignments
• Convenient use of computer-aided instruction
• Multi-media opportunities

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Formative and Summative Assessment

• Assessment is the general term used for measuring
  students' performance on a course against the
  aims and objectives of that course.
• Formative Assessment is assessment as part of
  teaching questions and assignments set to help
  the student learn effectively, but not used to
  determine the student's course results.
• Summative Assessment is assessment to determine a
  student's overall level of performance on the
  course questions and assignments, the grades or
  scores of which are used in determining the
  student's course result.

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Assessment

• Summative assessment of online courses is very
  traditional and often has a face-to-face
  component
• Formative assessment is more experimental and
  based on online activities.
• Most institutions apply several assessment
  methods in a course or program.
• Tutor assessment is the most common form of
  assessment.
• There are many examples of self-assessment
• Computer assessment is relatively scarce, but we
  found several examples of online quizzes,
  multiple choice tests, and interactive exercises.
• Peer assessment is relatively scarce.

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Online Assessment

• Consider self-assessment, peer assessment, group
  assessment, computer assessment, and teacher
  assessment
• Authentication of student identifications and
  detection of plagiarized material are obvious
  challenges for online assessment.
• One possible approach could be to focus more on
  the students knowledge management abilities

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Example of Assessment Matrix
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Course enrollment at Norways two largest
providers of Online Education 1987 - 2001
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Very Few Online Courses are Cost Effective

• The development and operation costs of online
  courses are high.
• The CISAER analysis revealed few, if any,
  examples of institutions with substantial income
  from student fees
• Likewise, there are few institutions that can
  claim that provision of web-based courses has
  been an economic success, if they disregard
  external research and development grants.
• It is important to develop sustainable online
  courses, that is courses that will persist.
• The market price in Norway is about 3500 Euro for
  the equivalent of one year full time study
• Nätuniversitetet in (www.netuniversity.se)
  provides about 12000 Euro for the same

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LMS at 54 Norwegian colleges and universities
Source Rune Runnestø og Gunnar Ristesund
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Learning Management Systems

• Many institutions have developed in-house LMS
  solutions
• At the moment, BlackBoard and WebCT seem to be
  the two dominant LMS systems internationally.

• LMS systems are continuously being improved, but
  all the systems I know of could be perceived as
  strait jackets that limit the pedagogical freedom
  and force us to comply with the suppliers
  pedagogical models.

Bildet er hentet fra http//fsweb.wm.edu/crossroa
ds/history.htm
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Systems that Support Online Education
IMS Content Packaging Spec.
IMS Enterprise Spec.
Agresso
WebCT/ClassFronter
FS/MSTAS/LADOC
Word/FrontPage
E-learning standard spesifications such as SCORM,
AICC and IMS intend to make the integration easier

• There seems to be a general lack of integration
  between content creation systems, learning
  management systems, student management systems,
  and accounting systems .
• Further, there seems to be little focus on
  standards such as IMS and SCORM in higher
  education .

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IMS Specifications

• The IMS Learning Resources Meta-data
  Specificationscreate a uniform way for
  describing learning resources so that they can be
  more easily found (discovered), using meta-data
  aware search tools that reflect the unique needs
  of users in learning situations.
• The IMS Enterprise Specificationis aimed at
  administrative applications and services that
  need to share data about learners, courses,
  performance, etc., across platforms, operating
  systems, user interfaces, and so on.
• The IMS Content Packaging Specificationwill
  make it easier to create reusable content objects
  that will be useful in a variety of learning
  systems.
• The IMS Question Test Specificationaddresses
  the need to be able to share test items and other
  assessment tools across different systems.
• The IMS Learner Profiles Specificationwill look
  at ways to organize learner information so that
  learning systems can be more responsive to the
  specific needs of each user.

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Online Education Systems that should work together
ContentCreationTools
Accounting System
LearningManagement System
ProspectiveSystem
Student Management System
LogisticsSystem
OtherSystems
CRMSystem
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Are Online Courses Better?

• Online courses could be better than classroom
  courses, simply because they can reach more
  students. So, there are more students to share
  the costs and it is feasible to invest more
  resources in course development.

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Course Development

• Some institutions have course development teams
  others use the tutor as the sole designer of a
  course.
• The different models have implications for both
  quality control and development time.

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Course Content

• One of the most obvious misapprehensions about
  online courses is that they should take place in
  front of the PC. Most online students spend much
  more time studying textbooks and preparing
  assignments than surfing the Internet.
• Paper is often a better medium for text an
  television is better for presenting video.
• Still, there is a tendency among online educators
  to substitute excellent textbooks with mediocre
  web material and superb videocassettes with a
  tiny, degenerated PC-version of the video.
• My point is that we should combine the best from
  each medium and not present everything on the
  Internet. But this is hard for many traditional
  universities because they do not have the
  logistic systems and technological competence to
  handle the mix of media.

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Enrollment and Progress Flexibility

• Main models
• Group enrollment and progress
• Individual enrollment and progress
• The models represent different strategies that
  have important consequences for marketing,
  administrative systems, and pedagogical
  approaches.
• Group based enrollment and progression is
  predominant
• 46 institutions used the group model
• 12 followed the individual model
• 11 institutions offered both models

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The CISAER Project

• European Leonardo da Vinci project
• International survey and analysis of courses on
  the Internet
• Strategic recommendations
• Based on
• literature reviews,
• catalogue data from 130 institutions in 26
  countries (March 98 - Feb. 99)
• 72 interviews with key persons at these
  institutions (spring 99)
• Analysis written spring 2000.

www.nettskolen.com/cisaer
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(No Transcript)
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Global Issues

• Globally, there are more than 100.000 online
  courses available on the Internet
• Among the 130 catalogue entries, 45 were from
  the English language countries USA, UK,
  Australia, Canada, and Ireland.
• There is a steady growth of institutions that
  offer online courses to students in other
  countries.

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Educational imperialism?

• In America, online educators tend to perceive
  the Internet as their home market other
  countries regard it as an opportunity to study
  online courses from the United States.
• Morten Flate Paulsen
• Oslo, Norway
• Newsweek June 5, 2000
• I will not be surprised if American tutors will
  dominate online education at the university level
  in the same way as American textbooks already do.

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Strategic Recommendations

• Promote national and international harmonization
  of degrees, certificates, credits, and grades to
  facilitate online mobility of students
• Oppose national regulations that inhibits
  institutions from charging tuition fees
• Focus on cost effective online education
• Develop better systems for administration of
  online education
• Support initiatives for training of online
  teachers, administrators, and instructional
  designers
• Oppose regulations and attitudes that inhibits
  online assessment
• Support further research on online pedagogy and
  didactics
• Develop and implement strategies to reduce the
  workload of online teachers
• www.nettskolen.com/cisaer