|
In this issue of News Briefs:Commonwealth of Learning: Knowledge Management RoundtableOptimistic Online Education Study |
Commonwealth of Learning: Knowledge Management Roundtable
The outcomes from The Commonwealth of Learning's Knowledge Management Roundtable, held in October 1999 at the organisation's Vancouver headquarters, have now been posted on the COL Website. Experts in distance education libraries and information databases discussed the changing nature of knowledge management and available technologies and examined how COL and its Information Resource Centre can best meet the needs of stakeholders around the Commonwealth. The group drafted a mission statement for a Commonwealth Open Learning Interactive Network for Knowledge Sharing (COLINKS).
Optimistic Online Education Study
Via Erin Bale's Networking newsletter for January, we've heard about the publication of a major evaluative study of online education by a professorial team in the University of Illinois. The relevant extract from Networkingis reproduced below, with thanks. The study offers some interesting reflections to set against the concerns voiced by the Alliance for Childhood about the impact of technology at the opposite end of the educational spectrum.
OPTIMISTIC ONLINE EDUCATION STUDYProfessors at the University of Illinois <http://www.uillinois.edu> have released the results of one year's study, discussion and evaluation of online education. The sixteen tenured professors, half of them online learning enthusiasts and the other half skeptics or fence-sitters, formed the Teaching at an Internet Distance Seminar <http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/tid/> in 1998 "to study the pedagogy of online learning, to examine what made teaching to be good teaching, whether in the classroom or online, and to suggest how online teaching and learning can be done with high quality at the University of Illinois."
During the 1998/99 year, the group held seminars, discussions and retreats to debate the meaning and merits of online pedagogy. Invited speakers brought positive and negative perspectives to the table: guests included Andrew Feenberg, Professor of Philosophy at San Diego State University and an early innovator -- indeed, a father -- of the field of online learning; Linda Harasim, Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and leader of the TeleLearning Networks of Centres of Excellence and the
Virtual-U project; and David Noble, Professor of History at York University and the author of the Digital Diploma Mills series of papers.In their report, available online at <http://www.vpaa.uillinois.edu/tid/report/>, the group concludes that online education can be viable, practical and pedagogically sound, but they caution that this is only true if certain conditions are understood and met by both faculty and administrators:
*The communication and sense of community in traditional education is an important part of the university experience -- especially for undergraduate students -- that is difficult to replicate online. Online educators must strive to compensate for the lack of the human element in online teaching.
*Online education must be undertaken in order to achieve quality, not efficiency. It is both time- and labour-intensive, requiring a higher investment and a lower student:teacher ratio than classroom teaching.
*The quality of online education is very much dependent on faculty members' having creative control of course development and ownership of the resulting intellectual property. Administrators are urged to beware outsourcing, especially to commercial interests.
This report is interesting as much for the glimpse it offers into the values and views of a group of established academics as for their conclusions about online pedagogy per se. It's a reality check for readers -- one that may frustrate those more convinced of the potential benefits of new technologies to teaching and student learning, but one necessary to an understanding of why technological change is not embraced more easily and widely within university teaching.
In "What Ever Happened to Instructional Technology?" William Geoghegan (1994) argues that "one of the most basic reasons underlying the limited use of instructional technology is our failure to recognize and deal with the social and psychological dimensions of technological innovation and diffusion: the constellations of academic and professional goals, interests, and needs, technology interests, patterns of work, sources of support, social networks, etc., that play a determining role in faculty willingness to adopt and utilize technology in the classroom."
The University of Illinois report reflects some of these goals, interests and patterns of work as the professors grapple with the changes bundled with online teaching.