Tony Bates » developing intellectual skills

Designing research for the Ontario Online Institute

Tony Bates — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:12:25 +0000

Toronto Island from the HECQO boardroom

HECQO and the Ontario Online Institute

I spent a very interesting day on July 7 at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), discussing a possible research agenda that would support the establishment of the proposed Ontario Online Institute. The creation of this institute is still a work in progress, but HEQCO has a mandate to do research that informs Ontario government policy, and it is investigating research projects that will assist the Ontario Online Institute, whatever its ultimate form. Tom Carey, a faculty member at the University of Waterloo and a consultant to HEQCO, was the organiser of the workshop, which included e-learning specialists from colleges and universities across Ontario, as well as senior Ministry officials.

The Ontario government, hard hit by last year’s recession (although its economy is rapidly recovering), is seeking to establish Ontario as a world leader in innovation and productivity, and the Ontario Online Institute is one mechanism that it is establishing as part of the larger agenda to promote innovation and change within the province.

The format and structure of the Ontario Online Institute are no clearer now than when I posted on this topic in March, but whatever its form or structure, there are certain challenges that Ontario faces if it wishes to become a world leader in this area. Terry Anderson of Athabasca University and myself were invited as research consultants with a mandate to identify the characteristics of a ‘best online post-secondary teaching system’ – in 2010 and 2015 – and to suggest research areas that would help inform the development of such a system.

There was an extremely interesting discussion and set of suggestions from the participants, which will be available from HEQCO shortly as a Research Note on Research and Innovation for Transformative E-learning.

My presentation

I presented basically two slides. The first identified the following characteristics of a ‘world leader’ in post-secondary online learning:

Quality teaching: 21st century skills and knowledge + modern pedagogy (learner-centered, collaborative, open, facilitative)

I argued however that quality online teaching and learning was a necessary but not sufficient requirement to be a world leader in online learning. Other essential characteristics were:

Recognized qualifications
Open access
Flexible delivery
Credit transfer
Cost-effectiveness/new business models
Appropriate use of technology
Consortia and collaboration

There were several other criteria I could have added.

In terms of research, I suggested the following priorities:

an analysis of different models of hybrid learning and the conditions that work best for the different models
development of theory or guidelines on when to use face-to-face or online learning in specific discipline areas, and for what purposes
new business models (e.g. Activity Based Costing) and an examination of the effect of moving to online learning on overhead costs (e.g., parking spaces, campus heating and lighting)
new methods of online assessment of key 21st century skills, for example through e-portfolios
independent evaluation of innovative teaching, and incentives for innovative teaching through provincial awards
development of low-cost simulations for applied learning/vocational education
identification of appropriate designs and roles for mobile learning.

There were several other areas I could have included, such as research into appropriate ways to incorporate open content, best methods to facilitate online learning support, and appropriate models for faculty development, etc.

In the afternoon we divided into four groups, addressing the following potential research areas, defined by the participants in the workshop:

flexible access and learner support
policy and infrastructure issues
strategic skills: how to develop the skills needed for innovation in a knowledge society
pedagogical and teaching issues, including professional development and training

Suggestions for research on policy and infrastructure

I was the facilitator of the group that discussed policy and infrastructure issues, and here are their suggestions for research or analysis:

identify and then remove the systemic and institutional policy impediments to innovation in teaching
what are appropriate business models for online learning?
what are appropriate incentives to foster online learning?
develop or disseminate guidelines on quality assurance
what are the conditions that lead to true, deep partnerships/collaboration around e-learning? For instance, what barriers do collective agreements present to collaboration?
do we need a provincial technology infrastructure and if so what should it look like? What tools/services should be centralized, institutional, or a student responsibility? What principles should operate to decide the location and ‘ownership’ of technology tools and services? How should infrastructure be funded?
what would be appropriate measures of success for the OOI (when we know what it is)?
review the conditions for success (at a system level) in online learning from other jurisdictions where online learning has been successfully implemented;
review existing successful collaborative projects in Ontario (e.g. OCAS, OUAC, Bibliothèque, ORION, SHARPNET) and identify success factors for inter-institutional collaboration
set up a working group on how to deal with IP issues and open content
Set up a working group to look at privacy and security policies from cloud computing/governance of IT

In terms of research process, our group proposed to HEQCO:

Don’t get locked into traditional research models; use funds to draw on existing expertise to identify issues and policies
Bring e-learning ‘leaders’ in Ontario together as a group to inform/advise government on some of these issues
Draw on secondary sources, i.e. existing literature/research, as much as possible, rather than reinvent the wheel with new research
tackle some of the policy issues through consultation and workshops, rather than academic research.

What next?

The forthcoming Research Note from HEQCO will synthesize the discussions from the various experts’ groups and ongoing conversations with Ontario institutions and organizations , but this is my personal, interim report on a very interesting meeting.

Questions for readers

1. If you were asked to define the characteristics of a higher education system that is a world leader in terms of online learning, what would you suggest?

2. What research in online learning do you think needs to be done to help develop a leading, world class, higher education system?

Another view on research for the Ontario Online Institute

Tony Bates — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:18:28 +0000

Maxim Jean-Louis, the President of Contact North, was one of the participants in the recent HEQCO meeting to discuss possible areas of research that would inform the development of a new Ontario Online Institute.

Following the meeting, he produced a very interesting document for HEQCO entitled: A Research Framework for the Online Learning Institute aka A Process to Take the Ontario Online Learning System to the Next Level. He has agreed to share a condensed version of this paper, a full copy of which can be obtained from Maxim on request. Each recommendation is linked to HEQCO’s mandate.

The Seven “Big” Applied Research Challenges

1. Significantly improving the level of student engagement in online learning courses. (Program and Course Quality Issue)

2. Rethinking the practice of instructional design to move away from content/skills mastery into higher level skills and competencies – moving learners to Level 5 literacy. (Program and Course Quality Issue).

3. Partnering with RIM, Apple, Google and others to develop next generation “apps” to better enable innovation for mobile learning. (Innovation Issue)

4. Developing the processes map for rapid course development – what does it take to develop better courses in half the time? (Systems Design Issue)

5. No Ontario post-secondary institution has online learning at the core of its strategic intent. What would it take for an institution to shift its focus to this and see its role as securing one third of its students online by 2015 and more than half by 2020? (Systems Design Issue)

6. What are the appropriate metrics for the accountability of online courses and programs in terms of quality, cost-effectiveness and value? (Accountability Issue)

7. What online learning practices are best suited and are effective for Aboriginal learners at the post-secondary level? (Accessibility and Quality Issue)

The Management of Innovation – the Other Focal Point for Research

A study of an Innovative Management process requires us to understand:

The resilience and resistance of established systems
The readiness of institutions, organizations and networks for change
The barriers to change
The re-engineering of expectations, processes and resource allocation
The leadership and change management skills of key personnel

Measuring quality

Finally, Maxim had some very interesting things to say about measuring quality, arguing that Ontario needed to measure quality according to the fitness of purpose of an institution. Maxim’s suggestions on quality are so useful that they need a separate posting.

Conclusion

The intent is to stimulate a dialogue – a challenge to see a research agenda as part of the process of creation (hence the focus here on applied research) of the institute. Rather than being independent and to the side, Maxim argues that this agenda should be a critical piece of the jigsaw used to design and build the new institute. If evidence based decision making is to occur, he argues that it is key that the seven big questions be used to guide applied R&D investments to issues that not only matter, but where evidence could make a real difference to practice.

Measuring interaction in asynchronous online learning

Tony Bates — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:26:43 +0000

Persico, D., Pozzi, F. and Sarti, L. (2010) Monitoring collaborative activities in computer supported collaborative learning, Distance Education, Vol. 31. No. 1, pp. 5-22

This team of Italian researchers have developed a methodology to track ‘participative, social, cognitive and teaching dimensions of the learning process’ in asynchronous, text-based online teaching in a blended learning context.

Comment: A good review of the literature and some interesting suggestions on how to do this kind of analysis in a pragmatic way, such as the tutor classifying and tagging comments when reading. Still looks pretty labour intensive to me, though, for regular online teaching, although useful as a research tool.

Dispelling myths

Tony Bates — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:30:33 +0000

I came across some blogs about ‘myths’, so I thought I’d put them together.

Myth No. 1: ‘A university education is becoming so costly – in the USA – that it’s not worth the investment.’

Proto, R. (2010) Is college still worth the investment? HICE SCHOOL, 30 June

Randy Proto, the President and CEO of the American Institutes school group, does a pretty good demolition job on this myth on Joe Hices’s excellent blog. Randy points out that the average student college debt in the USA on graduation is about $20,000, less than the average loan taken out to buy a car. More importantly the lifetime return on investment is about $450,000 in earnings more for those with a bachelor’s degree over those without a degree. (The compound interest on $20,000 over 40 years is $140,000 at 5%, so you’re still about $7,750 a year better off with a degree, even if you had $20,000 to invest instead of paying to go to college). Furthermore 63% of jobs will require a degree by 2018.

The ELT@Traceyo blog drew my attention to a recent survey of k-12 classroom teachers in the USA commissioned by Walden University (Eduventures Inc. conducted the research)

Grunwald Associates LLC (2010) Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths: A Study on the Connection Between K–12 Technology Use and 21st Century Skills Minneapolis: Walden University

The report identifies five myths, all of which the survey indicated were untrue:

1. Teachers who are newer to the profession and teachers who have greater access to technology are more likely to use technology frequently for instruction than other teachers. I found it interesting that the report found the opposite: it was the more experienced teachers who were more likely to use technology.

2. Only high-achieving students benefit from using technology. I actually did research many years ago on students’ use of television at the British Open University that did indeed find the opposite. The students who benefited most from math television programs were in fact the ‘borderline’ students. The ‘A’ students didn’t need the extra help, and the fail students were so lost that even the TV programs didn’t help. However, the borderline students found the linking of the abstract formulae to real world examples in the TV programs helped their understanding. (For more on the role of video, see my book, ‘Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education.’)

3. Given that students today are comfortable with technology, teachers’ use of technology is less important to student learning. The report states that: Teachers who use technology frequently to support learning in their classrooms report greater beneﬁts to student learning, engagement and skills from technology than teachers who spend less time using technology to support learning. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? The psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. Once you make a decision, you tend to find evidence to support the correctness of the decision and ignore evidence to the contrary. It may be true that technology leads to better learning outcomes, but you need to measure the outcomes, not ask for opinions about outcomes.

4. Teachers and administrators have shared understandings [I think they mean 'agree'] about classroom technology use and 21st century skills. The report found that administrators overestimated technology use by teachers and were more supportive of the use of technology on the whole than were the teachers.

5. Teachers feel well prepared by their initial teacher preparation programs to effectively incorporate technology into classroom instruction and to foster 21st century skills. In fact, most teachers do not believe that their pre-service programs prepared them well in either technology or 21st century skills. Teachers place more value on advanced training programs. This doesn’t say much for Faculties of Education, who are supposed to provide pre-service training – but then this is Walden University, a private online university focused on adult learners.

Now I suspect that the report writers put up these ‘myths’ as straw men to be knocked down, but the findings themselves are valuable. As the excellent discussion of this report by ELT@Traceyo makes clear, though, the link between the use of technology and generic 21st century skills is less well made in the report. Tracey also notes that this was a survey of teachers in the USA, and wonders what the results would have been in other countries.

Innovate or die: a message for higher education institutions

Tony Bates — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 05:22:34 +0000

It’s funny how reports on the same issue arrive from completely different directions. These four all deal with the issue of innovation and higher education.

Baker, S. (2010) Hefce gives out extra places and takes back £20m from teaching funds Times Higher Education, June 25

Calhoun, T. (2010) Re-imagining Higher Education, Post-Recession SCUP Links Blog, June 27

Kamenetz, A. (2010) Online education an the laying on of hands Huffington Post, June 29

OECD (2010) The OECD Innovation Strategy: Getting a Head Start on Tomorrow Paris: OECD

Let’s start with a focus on the financial conditions that universities and colleges will be facing in North America and Europe over the next five years. One clear outcome from the recent G20 meeting in Toronto (apart from torched police cars and broken windows) is that governments are moving away from stimulus funding to deficit and debt reduction. This will vary from country to country. In Britain, many government departments are looking at a 25% reduction in funding. The Times Higher Education article highlights the first steps in Britain: a £20 million ($30 million) reduction in funding for university places. This comes on top of earlier cuts of £900 million ($1.35 billion) in December, 2009.However, it should be noted that $10 million was ‘protected’ for another 10,000 places, and the bulk of this money went to the Open University and the rest to ‘newer, teaching focused universities’.

The Calhoun article is an interview with Donald Norris and Linda Baer, who state that:

‘data from SHEEO (State Higher Education Executive Officers, who manage state funding to universities in the USA) demonstrate that the deficits facing states will be deeper than previous recessions, will last longer, and that there will be no bouncing back to normal like after the recessions of the past 30 years. The new normal will be diminished state appropriates, on average about 20% down over the next three years. This will require institutions not just to muddle through, but to reimagine themselves for the new normal.’ If higher education hasn’t established genuine financial sustainability through reinvention by 2020, we will have missed our chance to shape our future. Others will do it for us.

This is a multi-year campaign, not a single quick fix in response to mid-year budget cuts. It begins with establishing the need for establishing a sustainable vision for 2020 – financially, programmatically, organizational, and politically. We expect that institutions will need to use the 2010-2013 period to launch processes of reimagination and reinvention, then progressively redirect their energies so that by 2020 they have leveraged innovations, achieved greater levels of academic and administrative productivity, fresh revenues, and an appreciation for the value propositions required in the new normal. This is a tall order, but we cannot escape the implications of the times.

Then we have the response from the institutions. Anna Kamenetz, the author of KDIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education has an interesting blog in the Huffington Post, where she describes the negative reaction she got to her book from a panel at a conference in San Diego. Her response was:

If people who care about both quality and equality in higher education don’t get deeply involved in the use of technology to stretch the resources we have in order to educate everyone to the best of our ability and their abilities, then the future will be shaped by people with worse motives and visions.

In other words, she is arguing that public institutions will have to improve their productivity if they are to maintain quality with less rather than more money. This requires innovation in teaching and learning, the main message from our book about the strategic management of technology.

What is needed to support innovation? The OECD report argues that

‘in economically advanced countries future growth must increasingly come from innovation-induced productivity growth. Innovation encompasses a wide range of activities in addition to R&D, such as organisational changes, training, testing, marketing and design. Innovation is defined as the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, work-place organisation or external relations.’ [Does this not sound like e-learning?]

Although the OECD report is more focused on businesses, these statements apply equally well to universities and colleges. There are two aspects:

preparing their students in such a way that students can foster innovation in the workplace when they leave
ensuring that the necessary internal changes take place within institutions to support innovation in teaching. research and administration

Among the OECD policy principles for innovation are:

1. Empowering people to innovate

• Education and training systems should equip people with the foundations to learn and develop the broad range of skills needed for innovation in all of its forms, and with the flexibility to upgrade skills and adapt to changing market conditions. [In other words, faculty need to be trained in new skills, and new approaches to teaching.]

To transform ideas and inventions into innovation requires a range of activities, including organizational changes, organizational-level training, testing, marketing and design.

I believe that these policy principles apply equally well to our post-secondary educational institutions. Look also at what the OECD says about how to develop a culture of innovation and ask yourself if this would apply to your own institution:

People generate the ideas and knowledge that power innovation, and they apply this knowledge and the resulting technologies, products and services in the workplace and as consumers. Innovation requires a wide variety of skills, as well as the capacity to learn, adapt or retrain, particularly following the introduction of radically new products and processes. Empowering people to innovate relies not only on broad and relevant education, but also on the development of wide-ranging skills that complement formal education.

Does this apply to faculty?

Lastly, the OECD report also focuses on how curricula need to change to encourage the development of skills that lead to innovation in the workplace:

Formal education is the basis for forming human capital, and policy makers should ensure that education systems help learners to adapt to the changing nature of innovation from the start. This requires curricula and pedagogies that equip students with the capacity to learn and apply new skills throughout their lives. Emphasis needs to be placed on skills such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, user orientation and team- work, in addition to domain-specific and linguistic skills. The acquisition of skills is a lifelong process; it does not end with formal education. Schools lay a base for lifelong learning, but ongoing skills acquisition needs to be encouraged. This involves recognising all forms of learning and making them visible, including through qualification systems. Rewarding lifelong learning and making it attractive may help enhance participation.

Universities, colleges and vocational training centres are essential nodes in the innovation system, both producing and attracting the human capital needed
for innovation. These institutions act as essential bridges between players –businesses, governments and countries – in broader and more open systems of innovation. They also contribute to the local quality of life and thus can help to attract the highly skilled from around the globe. World-class institutions can be the anchor for clusters of innovative activity. The major policy challenge is to recognise the essential role of universities in the innovation enterprise rather than view them, as is all too commonly the case, simply as providers of essential public goods. This requires a greater focus of policy makers on ensuring independence, competition, excellence, entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility in universities.

In short, universities and colleges are critical to developing graduates that can support innovation in the work-place. Perhaps even more importantly, though, the institutions themselves will have to find ways to innovate to provide quality services with less money. The appropriate use of technology, as with innovation in other domains, will be an essential component of that process.

So some questions, dear readers:

1. Do our (public) institutions really need to change, or is this just the usual North American hype and hyperbole?

2. If they do need to change, are they up to it? Do they have the will, skills, knowledge and attitude to make the changes necessary?

3. Is e-learning an essential component of any needed changes, or could the institutions manage the necessary changes without a heavy reliance on e-learning?

4. What is needed to bring about any necessary changes in our institutions?

Over to you.

The future of instructional design – or my heart belongs to ADDIE

Tony Bates — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:26:37 +0000

Victoria Harbour, BC

On Sunday, I attended a very interesting meeting of about 50 instructional designers (what is a good collective noun for instructional designers?) from across British Columbia, at Camosun College, Victoria. This was a pre-conference workshop before the Educational Technology Users Group of BC’s Spring Workshop (more on that in another post). The group discussed several questions, and I’ve pulled together what I heard:

1: Is there a future for instructional designers? (Facilitated by Paul Stacey, BCcampus). This was prompted by the statement that if we properly trained instructors in post-secondary education, would we still need instructional designers? The main feeling in the group was yes, we will continue to need instructional designers, because all instructors are NOT going to be properly trained (not enough time, too expensive, no rewards for taking time to be trained), the demands of technology and teaching are increasing, and instructional designers have different skill sets from instructors (even when trained to teach): instructors have a focus more on content transmission rather than skills development, for instance.

HOWEVER: if we want instructors to be more like facilitators than deliverers of content, they will need to be trained and this may undermine the added value that instructional designers currently bring to the task. I also wondered what others outside the profession might have said to this, particularly academic administrators and faculty.

There was also some discussion about what was needed to get into the profession. Even people with academic qualifications in ID find it difficult to get jobs without experience. There was strong agreement that it was important for instructional designers to have both classroom experience and experience of teaching online as well as academic qualifications in instructional design. The need for a proper career structure was also emphasised, with opportunities in learning technology units for ‘apprentice’ instructional designers working with more experienced instructional designers. This required HR departments in universities and colleges in many institutions to create new categories of jobs and career and promotion opportunities.

There was also some discussion of demand, with a concern that there were fewer jobs going in the public education system. This view was challenged though. With a move to more online and hybrid courses and the development of learning technology units, there was in fact an actual scarcity of experienced, qualified instructional designers, at least in Canada, although this did not always convert into actual positions. Training opportunities for instructional designers were also limited, especially in central Canada.

2. Goodbye to ADDIE? This topic (facilitated by Roger Powley) looked at the attack on instructional systems design (ISD) by Gordon and Zemke (2001), who have argued that the instructional systems design model is a fake and doesn’t work, in that no-one uses it, and it is based on false or no science.

There was a lot of agreement that the detailed implementation of the ISD model doesn’t work, especially for constructivist or learner-centered teaching, and web 2.0 tools did not fit easily with an ISD model, but questions were raised about what one would use instead. Several people pointed out that the ADDIE or ISD framework was useful, because it forced one to look at teaching and learning from a systems perspective, and that approach was still important and valuable, although slavish adherence to all the detailed steps was probably futile. Nevertheless at the end, there was a general feeling that the issues raised by Gordon and Zemke were not being adequately addressed by the profession.

3. Learning theory and instructional design. Lisa Read facilitated discussions on the question: does instructional design use a particular learning theory? And does ID take account sufficiently of different learning modalities or learning styles? This topic resulted in some very heated discussions, especially around research into learning styles and differences between media.

There was some agreement that different learning theories can all be useful depending on context, especially the ’state’ of individual learners and the nature of the subject matter. It was considered part of an instructional designer’s skills to be able to identify the most appropriate approaches to learning within different contexts, and not to be dogmatic about any single theoretical approach. There was some discussion about whether we needed new learning theories (such as connectivism) to account for social networking and other recent developments in media, but there was some skepticism about whether theories such as connectivism would fit easily with an instructional design approach.

4. Building engaging activities. There were two groups discussing this, one for post-secondary and one for k-12. I participated only in the k-12 group, facilitated by Maryjanne Yusyp. It was suggested that to build engaging activities, you needed to know your audience and what ‘fired them up.’ Some argued that social learning, and in particular listening to other people’s arguments and how they fitted with one’s own, was important for engagement. However, it was also pointed out that some students were not interested in social learning. They just wanted to know what to do and get the job done as quickly as possible. Finding ways to engage this kind of student was particularly challenging, especially in an online environment.

Building in success was considered important, but this was made unnecessarily difficult by the constraints of the ’system’. School curricular are too restrictive and cut off student engagement, and in fact standardized curricula and testing inhibit the building of skills, such as risk taking, exploration and personal engagement in learning so needed in today’s society. The comment was made that the distance learning approach in BC was particularly restrictive, not allowing teachers or students flexibility in subject exploration.

What is NOT being looked at instructional design.

In summarizing the discussion, I also looked at some of things that are not being done very well (or at all) in instructional design. The glaring gap for me was theory or practice or research to determine the appropriate use of face-to-face and online activities in hybrid or blended modes. What’s best done online and what’s best done on campus, when you can do both, but within limited time? In particular, how do we make best use of a limited campus experience? What are the factors or conditions we need to take into account when making such decisions?

Another gap was the design implications of open educational resources. Surpirisngly, this was not discussed much at this workshop, yet there are major issues about how best to create and use OERs.

Although we don’t have good designs or models yet for the use of web 2.0 or hybrid learning, we do have theories of learning. Why are we not applying theory more rigorously to these areas and coming up with new models based on theory that can be tested? (Yes, I’m asking for more innovation in teaching again – and perhaps new theory as well!)

Summary

Would you believe that this all happened within three hours and I went to only one quarter of the discussion groups? What struck me was how intense this community of practice was. There was total engagement and excitement during the whole three hours. The room was buzzing and the noise of discussion, laughter and argument was deafening.

Instructional designers live in a weird no-man’s land between faculty, students and administrators. Their role is not well understood outside their profession, (and sometimes not even within it, as it became clear on Sunday!), yet they are, in my view, the essential component that ensures quality in the use of e-learning. Although I am not an instructional designer by training (although I have practiced it often!) I have the greatest respect for their work, and it was a really enjoyable afternoon for me, as well as for them.

If any of you who were there would like to add to or correct comments made here, please do – indeed, I’d like to hear from anyone who has views on these topics.

SAIDE newletter on open and distance education in Africa

Tony Bates — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:56:42 +0000

The South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) has published its latest newsletter. Two articles caught my eye.

Mhlanga, E. (2010) SOFIE (Strengthening Open and Flexible Learning for Increased Education) Project Findings SAIDE Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 2

The aim of this study was to increase access to education and learning for young people affected by HIV and AIDS in Malawi and Lesotho by developing, trialing and evaluating an expanded model of schooling which used open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) to complement conventional schooling. The key design is the development of ‘circles of support’ that provide learning materials and teacher support for students who miss classes because of the need to care for family with HIV/AIDS. Although these are only preliminary results, the findings indicate that the intervention was successful, leading to less drop-out from school, and improved academic performance. (Note: this is not e-learning but print based support).

Preston, D. and Moore, A. (2010) The Use of Open Education Resources at the University of Malawi SAIDE Newsletter, Vol. 16, No. 2

During 2009 the University of Malawi (UNIMA) embarked on two OER projects, one at the Kamuzu College of Nursing and the second at the Bunda College of Agriculture. These projects were co-funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and facilitated jointly by SAIDE’s OER Africa Initiative and the International Association for Digital Publications (IADP).

At Kamuzu College of Nursing an interface was designed to hold the digital resources together in a manner that promoted the use of Problem-based Learning. This courseware is licensed under a creative commons licence and is freely-available on the OER Africa website.

At the Bunda College of Agriculture, the Language and Communication for Development Department decided to develop a textbook to address problems of staff and students not having access to the same set of textbooks despite their Communications Skills classes being a core course for all first year students. Secondly, students could not always access the recommended readings as the College Library did not have, or had an insufficient number of the texts. The 102 page Communication Skills textbook, which was created exclusively from OER, was released in early-2010 and has been offered back to the OER community. It is available from both the Bunda College website and the OER Africa website.

Again it is early days and immediate results for both the OER projects have been somewhat mixed but with promise for the future.

Also in this issue, the launch of the African Health OER Network was announced. The network provides a platform for African health academics to freely access and share educational materials as well as to debate key issues around the future of health education for healthcare workers in Africa. The aim of the network is to share and circulate health-related educational materials by building links to existing resources (e.g., programmes, modules, courses), which authors have shared under a Creative Commons licence.

The link between e-learning and economic development: the case of New Brunswick

Tony Bates — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:53:53 +0000

The University of New Brunswick

This has been a busy week for me, which accounts for the low number of postings. Earlier in the week, I was conducting a consultancy for the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and Saint John. (For readers outside Canada, Fredericton and Saint John are more than 4,000 kilometres from Vancouver. It takes about 8 hours to fly commercially – and yes, I’m still in Canada).

Why I was in New Brunswick

The University of New Brunswick is in the middle of a strategic planning process. As part of that process, I was invited to the university for two days, May 10-11, 2010, where I met with faculty and senior administrators, and made three presentations on e-learning and economic development.

In such a short visit, it is not possible to get an in-depth understanding of an institution’s strengths and weaknesses, or the context in which it works. Nevertheless, it is important to embed e-learning and the use of technology for teaching within the context in which it will operate.

I have therefore drawn together my thoughts from a very brief visit and tried to summarise them, so that they can be considered within UNB’s overall strategic planning process.

I really enjoyed my visit to UNB, where I was extremely well looked after, and in particular I wish to thank Lloyd Henderson for his detailed planning of my trip and good hospitality. I am also very grateful that the university has agreed to let me share my report to them with all my readers, as I believe many of your institutions will be facing similar challenges to those at UNB.

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada’s smallest provinces – about the same size as Ireland or Scotland or the Czech Republic – located on the Atlantic seaboard of Canada. Its total population is just under 1 million. About 80 percent of the land is covered with woodland inhabited by moose, bears and other wildlife. (Stephen Downes also lives there!) Workers in New Brunswick are paid about 15 percent less than the Canadian average, but house prices are also very cheap in comparison (average price $114,000 – compared to $450,000 in Vancouver). The three main cities are Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. The province is fully bi-lingual (French and English).

New Brunswick has historically been heavily dependent on natural resources, such as forestry, fisheries, and mining, for economic development and jobs. However, even before the recent recession, these industries were in decline. In particular, Saint John has faced difficulties as its older industries – such as ship building – have been unable to compete in the world economy and have been closing. Current industries include brewing, electricity generation, transport/distribution, call centres and the largest oil-refinery in Canada.

In the 1990s, under the leadership of the premier, Frank McKenna, New Brunswick developed a small but internationally recognised high-tech industry, mainly in the Fredericton area. The Information and Communications Technology sector is now the second-largest business sector in the province with more than 700 new economy companies employing over 30,000 people and generating revenues of over $2.1 billion annually. The key sub-sectors are call centres, e-learning and games technology, e-business solutions, information and communications technologies and engineering solutions. The provincial government claims that New Brunswick is a leader in e-learning development and implementation. More than two million people around the world have taken online courses and advanced training offered by New Brunswick ’s public and private e-learning providers.

A major concern is that the overall population in New Brunswick is declining in numbers and getting older (immigration to New Brunswick is low by Canadian standards, with about 3% of the population foreign immigrants, compared with 15% nationally). In particular, many young people are leaving the province to find work elsewhere.

The University of New Brunswick

The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is one of the oldest universities in Canada, founded 225 years ago. UNB has about 11,400 undergraduate and graduate students on its campuses. UNB claims to have the best student-to-faculty ratio of Canada’s comprehensive universities. It has two campuses, one in Fredericton, and one in Saint John. In a bilingual province, UNB is the main university for English speakers.

The University of New Brunswick has had a long history of distance education, and has about 4,000 course enrollments (about 400 FTEs) in fully online courses. About half of these are in non-credit programs through UNB Online, and the Certificate in Health, Safety and Environmental Processes has over 1,300 enrollments each year from all across Canada. UNB also offers a full Masters in Education online, with a large cohort of students in Trinidad and Tobago. Most of these fully online courses are facilitated through the College of Extended Learning, working in close collaboration with the faculties. These online courses are treated as extra load, with faculty receiving a stipend for the development and delivery of these courses.

In addition to the fully online courses, many courses on campus use Blackboard and other technologies to support conventional classroom teaching, although in general faculty are reluctant to offer credit courses fully online, as they fear this will cause face-to-face class sizes to drop below sustainable levels.

The university has a relatively new President, and he has taken the initiative to develop a new strategic plan for the university. I was invited to talk to faculty and senior administrators about e-learning and online learning as part of this strategic planning process.

e-Learning and economic development

Although UNB has a long history of distance education and some valuable online learning programs, e-learning has not been seen to date as a ‘core’ activity in a university that prides itself on personal contact with students and an intimate campus learning environment. UNB is atypical of many universities in North America, in that enrollments are declining, especially from high schools. There also are many other universities in the region competing for New Brunswick students.

However, the fastest growing part of the economy is the information and communications technology sector. Although ‘core’ computer science is an important part of that, corporate and commercial e-learning and electronic games are also important business sectors. Furthermore, if the university can develop more students with the skills and competencies needed in a knowledge-based economy, there is an opportunity for even greater economic growth in this sector, as graduates establish new, small companies in niche areas.

Furthermore, it may be a mistake to think that a move to e-learning might reduce on-campus enrolments, especially if the university focuses on hybrid courses, with a reduced face-to-face component, perhaps in the later years of undergraduate programs, as well as distance courses for students in New Brunswick who cannot easily get to the Fredericton or Saint John campuses on a regular 9 to 5, five days a week basis. In particular, with an already dynamic technology business sector, and an aging population, more flexible delivery focused on embedding ICT skills in a wide range of subject areas will attract more lifelong learners to compensate for the reduction in high school leavers.

Some suggestions for UNB

In order to foster further development of knowledge-based industries in the province, I suggested the following steps:

1. Greater incorporation of ICT and other 21st century skills (e.g. independent learning, problem solving) in a wider range of programs and subject disciplines.

2. A gradual move from almost entirely face-to-face courses in first year programs to hybrid or fully distance programs in the fourth year undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as develop more online non-credit certificate or diploma programs focused on the lifelong learning market.

3. Start gradually to redesign courses in this way on a program by program basis. Make sure the new programs are properly resourced (time for development + learning technology support).

4. Stop treating distance education courses as extra load, but integrate them into regular credit programming as part of a normal teaching load for instructors, perhaps supplemented with revenues from full cost recovery courses aimed at lifelong learners.

5. Look to partnership and consortia to leverage the development of online programs on an international basis.

6. Provide systematic and comprehensive training in pedagogy and educational technology for instructors scheduled to work on online programs.

7. Provide instructional and web designers to work in teams with instructors for the redesign of courses.

Conclusion

The development of a new strategic plan provides an excellent opportunity for UNB to leverage its advantages as an old, well established university with an excellent student/faculty ratio, into the development of programs closely aligned with the economic development of the province. E-learning could and probably should be an essential component of that plan.

Preliminary book review: An Introduction to Distance Education

Tony Bates — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:47:52 +0000

Cleveland-Innes, M. and Garrison, R. (eds.) 2010 An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era New York/Abingdon UK: Routledge

This book is essentially a collection of essays by mainly Canadian authors, although there are also authors from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Chapters

The book is organized as follows:

Foreword: Alan Tait (UK Open University)

1. ‘Teaching and learning in distance education: enter a new era’: Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University, Canada), which is a short introduction to the chapters in the book.

Part I: The Industrial Era

2. ‘Foundations of Distance Education’: Randy Garrison (University of Calgary) and Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University). They argue that the foundations of distance education were established in an industrial era, but we are now entering a post-industrial era that ‘is not fully understood or adequately addressed by scholars in the field.’

3. ‘Organization and technology of distance education’: Gary Miller (Penn State University.) He summarises the main developments in organization and technology from the early correspondence schools through to television and teleconferencing consortia.

4. ‘Teaching and learning before the digital age’: Margaret Haughey (Athabasca University.) This chapter focuses primarily on the way that the British Open University changed the basis of teaching and learning in distance education through a systems approach.

Part II: A New Era

5. ‘Distance education in a post-Fordist time’: Heather Kanuka and Charmaine Brooks (University of Alberta). In this chapter, the authors relate constructivist teaching and learning to the concepts and philosophy of post-Fordism, and argue that in a post-Fordist era, distance education cannot achieve flexible access, quality learning, and cost-effectiveness, but only any two of the three.

6. ‘Beyond boundaries; the evolution of distance education’: Doug Shale (University of Calgary). This chapter is another spin on the same themes in Chapter 3.

7. ‘Teaching and learning in post-industrial distance education’: Karen Swan (University of Illinois Springfield). This chapter argues that the new technologies associated with online learning lead to pedagogical approaches, such as constructivism and communities of inquiry, that are fundamentally different from those associated with industrial-age distance education.

Part III: A Unified Approach

8. ‘The future of learning technologies’: Phil Ice (American Public University System).’Paralleling a review of where we have been and where we are going is a discussion of the underlying pedagogical possibilities of technologies that increasingly tie together physical worlds.’

9. ‘Blended learning’: Norman Vaughan (Mount Royal University, Alberta). This chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with blended learning environments in higher education.

10. ‘The future of distance education: reformed, scrapped or recycled’: Terry Evans (Deakin University, Australia) and Brian Pauling (New Zealand). This chapter looks to the future possibilities for distance education and argues that distance education does have a future so long as ‘it adapts creatively to the changing technology, and the diversity and capacities of digital learners.’

Part IV: Summary and conclusion

11. ‘Leadership in a new era of higher distance education’: Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University) and Albert Sangra (Open University of Catalonia, Spain). This chapter ‘outlines the challenges in the current situation of higher education, the leadership issues and requirements for a new era in higher education, and the strategic planning that will support this process of transformation’.

12. ‘Conclusion’: Randy Garrison (University of Calgary) and Marti Cleveland-Innes (Athabasca University).

Other features

There are two other interesting features of this book. Each chapter includes a recognition a ’significant contributor’ to distance education related to the topic of each chapter, with a photo and short bio, presumably chosen by the chapter author. The significant ‘contributors to distance education’ include:

Sarah Guri-Rosenblit
Desmond Keegan
Otto Peters
Diana Laurillard
Michael G. Moore
Sir John Daniel
Robbie McClintock
Terry Anderson
Randy Garrison
Ron Oliver
Andrew Feenberg

Each chapter also contains a glossary of terms and definitions; and questions for review and discussion.

Preliminary Review

The cover of the book states that this is ‘A perfect textbook for Educational Technology doctorate, Masters and certificate programs’. The book is certainly timely and useful, because there have been major developments in online learning and distance education in the last ten years, and this book does cover the main developments. It should certainly provoke a lot of discussion – indeed it needs to, because as I will demonstrate in later posts, some of the content is highly contentious.

Secondly, as is bound to be the case where most chapters are thoughtful essays on the historical development of distance education, there is a heavy focus on theory rather than practice. Now I have to say that I have always been uninterested to the point of hostility at attempts to create grand theories around distance education. For me, distance education is nothing more than a delivery method. It can be very good or very bad, objectivist or constructivist, open or closed, democratic or elite, and it can and does accommodate a very wide range of teaching methods and technologies. None of these dimensions (except perhaps the technological and organizational ones, and they keep shifting) are ‘intrinsic’ to or defining characteristics of distance education.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not hostile to theories of teaching and learning, to social and political theories, to epistemological and ethical issues in teaching and learning, and all these can be found in the way distance education has been applied, it’s just I struggle with the idea of distance education becoming (or needing to become) ‘post-Fordist’ in nature for example. I’d like to see some widespread evidence for this, rather than just a few examples. In other words, there is a lot of rhetoric in this book.

What’s been scratching away under my skin as I’ve been reading this book is that so much of what is written here doesn’t quite fit my experience of the development of distance education; it’s too neat and over-simplified, and yes, too theoretical, whereas distance education as it is practiced is rough, often very pragmatic to the point of being totally unreflecting, very diverse, and at the same time has been very much embedded in millions of students’ personal life experiences. None of this comes through very strongly in the book.

I also have to say that much of the writing in this book is not just Canadian, not even Western Canadian, but specifically from Alberta. There is nothing wrong with that per se, and indeed, I am pleased to see Canadian writers featured so prominently, but I would prefer in an introduction to distance education a much wider range of views and experience in distance education. What about distance education in developing countries, for instance, which is totally ignored in this book?

Yet despite my initial reactions, this is still a book well worth reading by anyone interested in distance education. There are many excellent chapters, as well as some exasperating ones. For this reason, I feel I need more space to discuss individual chapters, which I will do in subsequent postings.

I guess then in summary that it’s the title I’m bothered by. I would much prefer this to have been called: ‘Some interesting and provocative ideas about the nature of distance education and its development’, which is what the book is really about. By all means read it if you are studying distance education – but make sure you have some other books on the topic, as well.

What do instructors need to know about teaching with technology?

Tony Bates — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:08:20 +0000

I believe that we will see no real innovation, no fundamental change, in post-secondary education, at least from within, unless all instructors have basic training in teaching at a post-secondary level.

I was involved in developing a post-graduate certificate in technology-based distributed learning which later morphed into a full Master in Educational Technology at UBC. Both of these though were optional programs – you don’t need these qualifications to teach in post-secondary education. And as a result, most of the students in these programs are not tenured faculty in post-secondary education.

However, let’s suppose we had a benevolent dictatorship (some would argue we have that already in Canada) and he/she mandated that all post-secondary instructors must be qualified before they can teach in universities or colleges. What would such a program look like? Here are my thoughts on this.

Any training program is a balance between the minimum that a learner needs to know to operate effectively and the time available for training. A full one year master’s program will obviously cover much more ground than an eight week part-time program. Initial training does not have to be perfect and satisfy all requirements, because I see professional development as a continuous process throughout one’s career. I will concentrate here on what I consider the minimum that an instructor needs to know to teach effectively in post-secondary education (assuming that they already have a good knowledge base in the subject area):

epistemology: understanding different kinds of knowledge, for instance the difference between objectivism (often reflected in the teaching of science and engineering) and the social construction of knowledge; a discussion of the nature of networked knowledge. Recognizing that there are differences in beliefs in how knowledge is validated and an understanding that there are different perspectives on this will provide a foundation for choosing appropriate teaching strategies in different domains of knowledge (science or arts, for instance);
the biological basis of learning: a basic introduction to how the brain works, particularly regarding memory, cognition, and emotions (especially motivation); this will become important in interpreting the emerging field of brain research and learning
learning theories (linked to epistemology), such as behaviourism, cognitivism, the social construction of knowledge, and possibly connectivism
the design of teaching: applying theory to practice: this would include needs assessments related to learner differences, an introduction to instructional design, defining learning outcomes and objectives, learner activities (especially around the social construction of knowledge) and the link between learning outcomes, knowledge representation (see below), and assessment; using open content; course evaluation methods; different types of courses (face-to-face, blended, distance); and an introduction to course and program planning
learning technologies: this would start with an assessment of the instructor’s current IT skills and up-skilling where necessary; the relationship between technology and knowledge representation; functions and structures of learning management systems and web 2.0 tools; relationship between different technologies and theories of learning; strategies for media and technology selection
project work: designing, delivering and evaluating a course

Each of these areas would be worth the equivalent of three credits except the project, which would be worth six credits, and together would lead to a post-graduate certificate or diploma in post-secondary teaching (21 credits in all). Thus the program would be completed in under a year of full-time study, preferably as part of a graduate program.

To obtain a master degree in post-secondary teaching, the learner would need to add three elective courses (making 30 credits) as follows:

electives: these might include a course on research in teaching and learning; on emerging technologies; on cultural and international issues in teaching and learning; on planning and managing courses; on the application of a particular technology tool; on teaching strategies for a particular subject discipline; or other topics of choice by the learner as independent study.

All programs would be available online, or face-to-face, or in a blended mode. There would be at least one institution in every state or province licensed to offer the program, and the program would be nationally recognised and a condition of employment as an instructor in post-secondary education.

So over to you. What would you include? Do you disagree with what I have included? Could you think of a more imaginative way to provide training?

And yes, I realise that this will never happen: who needs training in teaching anyway? Can’t anyone do this?