This very useful article asks two experts, Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington, and Mark Frydenberg of Bentley University, to pick their favourite web 2.0 tools for instruction. Here’s their choices (read the article to find [...]]]> Lloyd, M. (2010) 18 Web 2.0 tools for instruction Campus Technology, April 28

This very useful article asks two experts, Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University-Bloomington, and Mark Frydenberg of Bentley University, to pick their favourite web 2.0 tools for instruction. Here’s their choices (read the article to find out why, and how they’ve used them):

Sara:

• Magma
• Flook
• Sidewiki
• UStream Mobile
• Thwapr
• Jing

Mark

• Delicious, Diigo, and Twine
• Screentoaster
• Doodle
• CoverItLive
• WolframAlpha
• Dimdim

If anyone out there has experience in using any of these tools for teaching, and is willing to share their experience, I’d be very grateful

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 [...]]]> 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.

This is the first of two articles on the use of podcasting at the University of Buffalo to attract students into taking social work programs from the university. I particularly liked this article because it goes the various [...]]]> Schaffhauser, D. (2010) Producing a Podcast: Lessons from U Buffalo School of Social Work Campus Technology, 24 March

This is the first of two articles on the use of podcasting at the University of Buffalo to attract students into taking social work programs from the university. I particularly liked this article because it goes the various steps the School faculty have taken to ensure quality podcasts, both in terms of content and sound quality. It illustrates the importance of working in a team, with both content and media production professionals.

Over ten million Open University tracks have been downloaded from iTunes U, the dedicated learning zone within the iTunes Store. Open University tracks on iTunes U cover a huge range of subjects, including business, [...]]]> The Open University (2010) The Open University hits ten million downloads on iTunes U In Partnership Milton Keynes UK: The Open University

Over ten million Open University tracks have been downloaded from iTunes U, the dedicated learning zone within the iTunes Store. Open University tracks on iTunes U cover a huge range of subjects, including business, computing, technology, healthcare and science. The most popular collections have been in languages and science, with the most downloaded to date being Beginners’ French.

As part of the celebrations of 60 years of distance education at UBC, Kelsey Beninger has written a fascinating history of distance education going back to the start of UBC in 1918. For anyone interested in the origins [...]]]> Beninger, K. (2010) Going the distance – the beginnings of distance education at UBC UBC e-Strategy Newsletter, February

As part of the celebrations of 60 years of distance education at UBC, Kelsey Beninger has written a fascinating history of distance education going back to the start of UBC in 1918. For anyone interested in the origins and history of distance education, this is an essential read.

This posting goes as far as 1956. I believe there are two more articles to come that will cover the period from 1956 to the present day.

So I was interested to [...]]]> Regular readers will know that I believe that ‘real’ engineering is one of the tougher areas for e-learning, because of the need for hands-on experience with equipment and materials (see ‘Can you teach ‘real’ engineering at a distance?’). Simulations and animations are obvious uses, but often expensive and difficult to develop.

So I was interested to see that Engineering Education, Volume 4 Issue 2, has a special edition devoted to learning technologies in engineering education. One nice feature is that the authors of the articles have made short videos to accompany their papers.

There are six articles and three case studies, as follows:

It’s now seven years since I resigned as Director of Distance Education and Technology at UBC, and my motto has always been ‘Never look back.’ However, two things came together to bring me back to UBC last week with a ‘formal’ invitation for [...]]]> The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (home of OLT)

It’s now seven years since I resigned as Director of Distance Education and Technology at UBC, and my motto has always been ‘Never look back.’ However, two things came together to bring me back to UBC last week with a ‘formal’ invitation for the first time since I left (I have of course been in informal, regular contact with former colleagues still working at UBC).

Teaching business studies

I had been invited to give a lunch-time presentation to about 50 faculty in the Sauder School of Business, entitled ‘Rising to the Top: Why Business Teaching Must Change’. (I was going to call it: ‘If university teaching was a business, it would have gone bankrupt long ago’, but I thought that might be too provocative.)

Instead I concentrated on changes in the demographics of Canadian post-secondary education students, in technology, and in desired learning outcomes (more emphasis on business skills and competencies), how the teaching of these skills needed to be embedded within the teaching of content, and how courses could be designed using web 2.0 technology to teach such skills, encourage learner-generated content, and provide greater flexibility for the changing market of learners. There were excellent questions from and discussion with the faculty. A copy of the presentation can be downloaded as a pdf file from here.

The UBC e-learning Open House 2010

Visitors to the Open House

On the same afternoon, about an hour later, the UBC e-learning Open House 2010 began, to which I had also been invited. This is a ‘fair’ of posters on different e-learning projects that have been started or have been active during 2009. There was a total of 25 different exhibits. I didn’t have time to visit them all, but here are some of those of most interest to me:

Doing research online: Online Master in Rehabilitation Science. This was a project on which I had been working with the department to develop just before I left. I was delighted to learn that the whole master program is now fully online, has 57 students from all over North America, and is self-funded from tuition fees (following a business model I had suggested). I was very pleased to meet again the two ‘champions’ of this program, Sue Stanton and Mary Clark, and to learn that they have developed a fully online way of supporting students conducting a research project online as a requirement of the master’s program, and how students defend their research online.

Using video in online teaching: Master of Social Work. This was another project I had been working on, but it was at a more tentative stage than Rehab Sciences when I left. The Master of Social Work is a mix of face-to-face courses and online courses. Professor Mary Russell and her colleagues, working with UBC’s Office of Learning Technologies, have developed a series of video clips on the dynamics of family violence which are incorporated into the lessons for online student discussions and assignments.

Using audio and video in online courses: Faculty of Education Some of you will be familiar with Natasha Boskic, who provides invaluable material for this web site on educational games and virtual worlds. She and colleagues in the Faculty of Education have developed a variety of ways to incorporate audio and video into their online courses. As Natasha pointed out, recent innovations in telecommunications technologies have lowered equipment and transmission costs, enabling audio and video to be easily integrated into the curriculum.

Open content:Faculty of Land and Wood Systems Dr. Les Lavkulich  and colleagues from the faculty, with Chris Crowley from the Office of Learning Technologies, have developed a really neat online teaching tool on Land Use Impacts, that includes text, graphics and video clips. Although it is used as part of two courses on sustainable soil management, it is also available to the public at: http://soilweb.landfood.ubc.ca/luitool/ This is an excellent example of well-designed open content that was also developed to support courses.

Designing effective learning in distance education: Office of Learning Technology. This year will be the 60th anniversary of distance education at UBC (more on this in a later blog). Several former colleagues, under the leadership of Jeff Miller, have worked with the faculties to develop over 125 fully online undergraduate and graduate courses. There are now almost 1,000 FTEs (about 10,000 course enrolments) in distance education courses, and this year enrolments grew by 20% compared with last year. OLT uses a variety of designs resulting in high quality, effective interactive online learning environments.

Open content: Preserving student scholarship: UBC Library This is another really interesting project led by Hilde Colenbrander and Julia Thompson. Using a Teaching and Learning Enhancement grant, they have employed a graduate student to track down non-thesis student online content and to educate students about copyright, scholarly publishing and open access. Students can showcase their work via UBC-authenticated e-portfolios, blogs, social networking sites and resumes and the content will be preserved by the Library in perpetuity.

Hilde Colenbrander (left) and colleague

I did not have time (and there isn’t space) to go into the other 19 projects. However, there is likely to be a more comprehensive and official report later in the next UBC e-Strategy Newsletter.

Gossip and speculation

Now we come to the interesting bit. Here is some of the gossip I picked up.

1. UBC is likely to look at the re-design of large first year lecture classes, to improve the first year learning experience. (This is not really gossip, as it as highlighted in the last e-Strategy Newsletter). This project will be led by Ted Dodds, the Vice-Provost, Information Technology. As Ted Dodds himself put it:

How do we use technology more effectively to take over and perform some of the more mundane aspects of the teaching and learning process by using technology in creative ways, to free up people’s time for both the student and the instructor for more direct engagement? We don’t do that well right now….We’re saying that our first year experience in teaching and learning is broken at UBC, and we need to think creatively as to how we can make it better — and make it the best there is.

Brave words but also right on the money, from my perspective.

2. UBC is the home of WebCT. However, UBC is also a key partner in Kuali, an open source consortium developing administrative software. UBC’s licence renewal for WebCT Vista comes up shortly, and I would not be surprised if the university decides to move to an open source learning management system, such as Sakai, although I understand no decision has yet been made.

3. A new strategy for e-learning? UBC went through a comprehensive set of plans and reports around 2000 to encourage and strengthen the use of technology for teaching. Since then, it has created the central Office of Learning Technologies, which supports the LMS, provides instructional design and educational technology support for the faculties, and manages much of the distance education programs developed with faculties. Also the Faculty of Medicine has in partnership with the Universities of Victoria and Northern British Columbia developed a unique distributed learning undergraduate medical program that is doubling the number of doctors trained in BC. Several of the faculties have also set up their own learning technology support units. As we have seen, fully online distance education programs are expanding rapidly, and the university uses clickers, lecture capture and other classroom technologies. Being on the outside, there are many more e-learning developments within UBC that I don’t know about.

However, as with most universities, it has not moved away from either the traditional technology-enhanced classroom or fully online courses. There are problems at UBC with large lecture classes, overcrowding, students not being able to complete on time because courses are full, and often lack of interaction between undergraduate students and research professors. There is very little hybrid learning, where courses are designed with less face-to-face time and careful choice of what to do online and what to do face-to-face.

The move to re-design first year courses, and the growing confidence and expertise of the central and faculty learning technology groups, are signs that perhaps the university is ready for another way of innovation. However, this will still require leadership and a willingness from mainstream faculty to change.

Conclusion

I’ve never regretted my decision to leave UBC (I was coming up to mandatory retirement anyway) and to start a new career as a consultant. However, I left behind some very good colleagues and some interesting projects. It was good to re-connect with both, and I was a bit overwhelmed at the kind welcome I received.

UBC has been a leader in the use of technology in research universities. Faculty and staff created the .ca domain, WebCT, BCNet, and the distributed medical program. It has several fully online masters programs, a large number of online undergraduate courses, and has developed new business models for online programs aimed at lifelong learners.

It has over the last 10 years solidified its use of technology, though, rather than looking at institution-wide change in teaching and learning. With the right management, growing student numbers, a tight financial context, and experience and skill in using technology, we may see some really interesting developments at UBC over the next few years.

]]> http://www.tonybates.ca/2010/01/31/a-personal-view-of-e-learning-at-the-university-of-british-columbia/feed/ 2 http://www.tonybates.ca/2009/09/23/video-use-and-higher-education/ http://www.tonybates.ca/2009/09/23/video-use-and-higher-education/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:29:41 +0000 Tony Bates http://www.tonybates.ca/?p=2374 Kaufman, P. and Mohan, J. (2009) Video use and higher education New York: Intelligent Television

This report, undertaken by Intelligent Television and the Copyright Clearance Center, ‘takes a careful look specifically at video use in higher education and takes stock of trends in teaching and learning at the university level.’

Executive summary:

In interviews with 57 faculty and [...]]]> Kaufman, P. and Mohan, J. (2009) Video use and higher education New York: Intelligent Television

This report, undertaken by Intelligent Television and the Copyright Clearance Center, ‘takes a careful look specifically at video use in higher education and takes stock of trends in teaching and learning at the university level.’

Executive summary:

In interviews with 57 faculty and librarians from 20 institutions and across 18 academic departments and schools, the Video and Higher Education Project found data to support the following:

• The educational use of video on campus is accelerating rapidly in departments across all disci-
  plines—from arts, humanities, and sciences to professional and vocational curricula.
• Faculty, librarians, and administrators expect their use of video in education to grow significantly over the next five years.
• Technology, legal, and other barriers continue to thwart faculty finding and accessing the segments of video they want for teaching and lectures.
• University libraries contain significant video repositories but the majority of the content is in analog (VHS) format and/or is not networkable.
• The majority of video usage today is still confined to audiovisual viewing equipment in classrooms or at the library.
• Faculty and administrators expect the sources of their video to shift from offline analog storage to online delivery.
• The demand for educationally-targeted video archives and services is high.

The full report contains extensive data and references about the use of video in higher education.

Comment

I wonder how useful much of the archived video will be in its current format. I have the same concerns about archived video that I have about lecture capture. When you move a medium such as video from one technology (VHS cassette) to another (digital downloading) you need to produce it in a different format to make it useful and to exploit the new delivery technology.

In particular, for educational use, you need relatively small, stand-alone ‘chunks’ of digital video to incorporate in a broader online learning environment. However, the cost advantages of ‘off-the-shelf’ video quickly disappear if it has to be edited to suit the new technology that will deliver it.

The BBC and the Open University Library entered on a huge project in the 1980s to convert the TV programs that the BBC made for the Open University into re-usable, stand-alone, video learning objects. Despite the excellent and unique quality of much of the material, the project was eventually abandoned because of the very high cost, not so much in the technical conversion from broadcast to cassette, but in the selection, editing and cataloguing of the content. These cost factors don’t change much over time.

At the same time, much of what was learned about the value of television for teaching still applies to video today (for a full list of functions, see the appendix in Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education).

So, we should be looking at new design models for video and audio for educational use in a digital age that build on past research into the unique educational characteristics of video and audio. In particular, I’d like to see lecture capture – and even more most video recordings of ‘talking head’ lectures – replaced by specific, short video clips that illustrate key concepts or processes, integrated into the curriculum with text readings and audio commentary from the professor, as well as with video contributions from students.

Boissonneault, J. (2009) Enjeux de la Médiatisation à l’Université Sudbury ON: Prise de Parole

If I have translated correctly, the book discusses the following question:

does not the presence of ICTs in the university require a new understanding of teaching and learning, [...]]]> For francophones, a book by Julie Boissonneault, a professor at Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada

Boissonneault, J. (2009) Enjeux de la Médiatisation à l’Université Sudbury ON: Prise de Parole

If I have translated correctly, the book discusses the following question:

does not the presence of ICTs in the university require a new understanding of teaching and learning, a new dynamic in pedagogical design? (‘la présence des NTIC sur la scène universitaire, jumulée à la redéfinition des rôles en éducation, ne mène-t-elle pas à une nouvelle représentation de ce que sont enseigner et apprendre, à une nouvelle dynamique sur le plan des relations pédagogiques?)

The book draws heavily on data from her study of professors teaching at a distance in a dual mode Canadian university.

A full review may follow later.

A report of research conducted by Phil Ice, at West Virginia University, that compared the learning of students using basic wordprocessing software with those using Buzzword, a Flash-based suite from Adobe that allowed students to add audio, graphics and diagrams to [...]]]> Guess, A. (2008) Better Learning with Sites and Sound Inside Higher Education, Dec 4

A report of research conducted by Phil Ice, at West Virginia University, that compared the learning of students using basic wordprocessing software with those using Buzzword, a Flash-based suite from Adobe that allowed students to add audio, graphics and diagrams to their work. He found students using the multimedia software were “more likely to explain more complex concepts using a combination of text and non-text based materials. The majority of participants … expressed the view that it was easier to express themselves at a higher cognitive level when they could present material using multiple media sources.”